Alphabétique
by ohtobealady
Summary: A collection of drabbles, all of which have a muse word. Each chapter will be a different word, starting with a different letter, all alphabetically organized. Some are drabbles from my tumblr account, but those that are new will be denoted by an asterisk (*) after the chapter title.
1. Anger

**Anger**

Robert lay awake in his dressing room at Grantham House, staring at the ceiling. He was straining his ears to hear. The foremost sound was the lamp beside the bed, an electric buzzing noise that seemed amplified the longer he listened. But then there it was, beyond the buzzing. Crying. Cora crying in their room beyond the door. He hadn't heard her cry in such a long time, years even, and his stomach turned when he thought of why. It lurched to think of what he had said.

He had questioned Mr. Bricker's intentions, but in not so many words. He had questioned them silently, really, not even bringing the subject up to Cora. He only watched as she demurely lowered her lashes and laughed with the man to her right at dinner. He only watched as the man studied her features, her mouth, as she spoke. Her lovely, lovely mouth.

Surely, Robert was imagining things. Bricker, however oily he seemed to be, understood that Cora, Lady Grantham, was Robert's wife. And so he had put his suspicions aside, and he swallowed down the childish jealousy he was embarrassed to feel.

That was until two nights before now, until Cora had returned to Rosamund's rather late and rumpled from Bricker's company. When she flew in the sitting room, flustered and visibly upset. When Rosamund had asked if she was alright, she had shook her head dismissively. Of course she was. Only tired. Very tired.

Seeing her that way, and knowing, knowing, that something had transpired, had done something inside of him. The whispered words his mother had uttered a week before echoed in his head. The small comment, obviously aimed at a blushing Cora and attentive Bricker across from them at dinner, had been little more than just words. He didn't put much thought to them then, but now they were suddenly unsettling. "The line can too often be blurred between dutiful delight and consequential desire." He remembered with a clinched fist how the man stared at her as she took a sip from her glass.

So this morning, when he heard her soft, polite, greeting from below and Bricker's resonating voice, he froze. He stood completely still for a moment and listened hard at the tap of her shoes against the floor, the way she beckoned the man into the drawing room. It wasn't the usual, practiced version of her voice. It was the private version. The version that Robert was used to hearing when they were alone. It was the version he heard next to him in the dark when she'd startle in the middle of the night and ask if he were awake.

"They're this way."

Robert had tiptoed to the edge of the balcony and looked down. He watched inconspicuously as Cora led Mr. Bricker into the drawing room behind her. He felt his heart stop when Bricker looked behind him before entering the room. Something wasn't proper about the man. Something wasn't proper about the way he had peered behind him. So, Robert hurried down. He hurried down and had swung open the door and saw them. Saw her with that man's lips against hers.

After that had been an angry blur. He had left the room, and she had followed, calling his name, and he had spun around and shook his finger at the man and yelled at her. And he had yelled at her again only moments before. Called her deceitful. Called her ungrateful. And then he had come in here, but now, now anger had subsided and sadness crept in. The vision of his wife, stiff in that man's arms, predominated all other thoughts. Her hands in tight balls by her sides. Her face as red as the walls around her, countless beautiful paintings all around her feet.

Robert rose from the bed and walked to the dividing door, listening again. The crying had softened. He took in a breath and knocked twice. When there was no response, and so he entered.

She sat up in their bed, a book in her lap, but closed, her hair in the familiar braid resting on her shoulder.

"What else would you like to add? Hmm?" She clutched at the book, her eyes now trained on its cover. Her voice wavered. "Any other choice names you'd like to call me?"

"You were kissing him. You were in there kissing him and you think you have a right to be indignant?" The anger that subsided earlier now resurfaced.

She shook her head and sniffed.

"Did you sleep with him?"

The words almost surprised himself, but he had asked them, the wrinkles of her dress two nights ago in his imagined periphery. Her eyes flew to his, tears brimming them again.

"What?"

"Did you sleep with him?" He repeated it slowly, his throat tightening.

Her expression grew hard and she took deep breaths. "34 years, Robert. We've been married for 34 years and you ask me if I slept with him?"

He opened his mouth, but she wasn't finished.

"Don't you know me at all?" She began to cry again. She moved the covers to the side and rose from the bed.

"I thought I did. I thought we knew one another, but after this morning, after seeing you in his arms, after seeing you kiss him, I'm not sure anymore."

She stood before him, clutching her dressing gown in her hand. "I didn't kiss him!"

"I saw you!"

She leaned forward and yelled. "You saw him kissing me!"

Robert took several breaths. "What?" It came out quietly.

She didn't respond, only pulled her dressing gown around her, pulling the tie tightly. He moved to her, grasping her arm. "What?"

She looked up at him, her blue eyes shimmering, searching his own. "Robert," she shook her head. "You're the only man I've-" she swallowed and looked down, color tinting her cheeks. "-I've ever…" She pushed out a sigh. "You know that."

He said nothing and she met his eyes again. "I love you, Robert." New tears came to her eyes and he felt his own begin to burn. "I love you."

And just like that, a new anger burned in his chest, but it was different from before. The way Cora had been standing there, as that man held her. The way her eyes shimmered now. He pulled her closely to him and felt her melt beneath his chin.

Simon Bricker had not seen the last of Lord Grantham.


	2. Breathless

**Breathless**

Her heart thumped too hard; she could hear it pumping away in her head. She stretched out her fingers in some vain effort to calm her body. But it was not to be. This corset was much too tight. This dress was much too hot. She could hear the train in the distance. The train that he was on.

She was vaguely aware of Sybil's six year old hand finding her own. She was vaguely aware of Carson standing near with Mary and Edith, now such young ladies, all looking eagerly into the near distance.

The crowd gathered closer as did the train.

There were steam and whistles. Her skirt fluttered around her. The doors were opening, the station porters attending the first class cars. A flood of men in uniforms poured out. And then, as she craned her neck to find him, Mary and Edith biting at their bits, the June sun shone through the break in the station's roof. It was warm on her skin, but it blinded her eyes.

"Papa!" Edith called from behind her.

Cora blinked, the sun still too bright. He'd been in South Africa for two years, he'd not been home in nine months, and she found it some cruel joke that she could still not see him now.

"Oh, it is him!" Mary exclaimed.

Sybil tugged more tightly to her mother's hand.

But the sun! Cora moved her hat frantically with her free hand, her corset strangling her now as her heart raced so fast it hurt.

And there he was, in his military green, walking through the steam, carrying one solitary bag, his face more beautiful than she had ever seen it.

"Darling," she tried, but she could produce no sound, her lips only mouthing the word.

Mary was at his side, smiling, holding his hand. Edith was there now, too, crying softly. Sybil was more tentative, taking Carson's outstretched hand and going to him when Cora couldn't seem to move.

Her heart. Her heart. It hurt, it ached. She saw him crouching down for Sybil pulling her tightly to him. Edith fell on his arms. Mary took his hand.

"Darling." It came out choked.

He looked up at her. He stood. She felt tears on her cheeks she hadn't realized she shed.

"Darling," she gasped again. "Oh, Robert."

In an instant his large hands were around her face, his forehead was to hers, his breathing rough and erratic. And then he kissed her. Hard, even pushing his tongue into her mouth in front of their girls and Carson as he led them back to the carriage, but she didn't care. Her hat pulled at her hair, but she didn't care. He held her face too tightly, but she didn't care.

There was nothing else but him. No noise. No station. No crowd around them for which they must uphold dignity as the Earl and his Countess. It didn't matter, not now.

For she knew when they arrived back at Downton there'd be his mother, and the servants, and Jarvis, and others to keep him away until tonight when she'd have him in her bed once again. But until then, she let him hold her here, at the depot, most intimately, and kiss her breathless.


	3. Courage

**Courage**

She didn't even notice the grass stains on her skirt until Mama had pointed them out to her. She must have gotten them when she had seen Robert fall. She had been there in an instant, kneeling beside him, shouting for Mary to fetch Dr. Clarkson.

Yes, Violet pointed them out, but it wasn't with judgement or with an air of reprimand as it might have been. No. She'd only used it as a ploy when she suggested she should change, bathe, make herself more comfortable.

"Baxter will want to put your skirt in to soak, my dear," she had said softly. Her hand was on Cora's shoulder.

But she didn't. She didn't want to leave him. She couldn't leave him.

Hours later now, Violet was back in the room. She didn't speak for a long while. She only looked on. Cora found herself wondering for a moment if perhaps Violet was praying. Cora had been and was ashamed to admit that she wasn't sure that it would make a difference. The heart attack or stroke, or whatever it had been, had been strong and left Robert unable to truly be conscious for the better part of 24 hours now. The thought made Cora's stomach sick. She squeezed his hand once again hoping he would grasp hers in return. It was in vain.

"Mama?"

Cora hadn't even realized that Mary was in the room nor for how long.

"Mama, you need to rest. And eat. When was the last you ate?"

Cora could only shake her head.

Mary crouched beside her, gripping her wrist. When she found her daughter's eyes, they were empathetic and sad. "I know, Mama. I know how you're afraid. But you must remember yourself."

"Myself?" Cora brought her eyes back to Robert, a face she knew better than her own. She knew every line that time had etched upon his skin. She knew every silver hair, every lash upon his eye.

Without warning, the tears came. "I don't even know who I am. Not without him."

Mary was there, and now Violet too, caressing her soothingly. Shushing her lovingly. "Oh, Mama. It may feel like it now…"

"No." She interrupted. The torrent of tears remained. "You see, all I've ever been was his wife. I've been his wife for more of my life then I've even been myself." She looked into her lap, catching her breath between sobs. "I don't want to be anything else."

Mary stood, now crying herself, and stepped away from her mother. She didn't know what to say, or how to comfort the pain that was so achingly familiar, yet so different from her own.

Violet did, however. "Cora."

Steadying herself, she looked to her mother-in-law, the wetness of her eyes causing halos to be cast around the lights.

"You will be Cora. The same Cora that is Robert's wife. The same Cora that he loves."

She shook her head, the tears falling again. "But how? I don't think I can…"

Violet took one step closer. "Yes you can. And you will."

Cora studied her husband's limp hand in her own. She felt herself nodding as she rubbed her thumb over the back of his hand.

Violet have Cora's shoulder a gentle squeeze. "You must take courage. We all must."


	4. Denial

**Denial**

She's a pale blue blur in the distance, the spring time wind whipping her dress around her. It clings to her legs and Robert's mind immediately drifts to other things, more secret, more intimate things, but stops himself short. He realizes with a lurch that it isn't her body that he's fantasizing about, but the gentle, soft way she whimpers in pleasure when he touches her. He's fantasizing of the way she sighs next to his side afterward, deliciously exhausted. He's thinking of the way her eyes light up when he comes in her room while she breakfasts, to tell her about his plans for the day. And there she is now, walking alone on the lawn, Mama having corrected, or more reprimanded, the way she addressed an invitation.

A spoon clanks against porcelain behind him and he turns from the window and looks at his mother. She picks up the cup of tea and sips from it, replacing it on the saucer with pursed lips.

"Was that necessary?"

She doesn't look at him, only raises her brow with her cup. "Necessary?"

"The way you spoke to her. Mama, she is trying. And she's learning…"

She looks at him then, wide-eyed and annoyed. "She's learning, Robert, because I'm teaching her. I'm redirecting her and correcting her…"

"You're badgering her!"

Violet turns angry. "I am NOT badgering her. If she would do things the way I tell her, then she wouldn't have her feelings hurt, though I must say she's terribly sensitive about it all. After all, she accepted this when she married you a year ago. She has got to see that what I do and what I say is only for her benefit."

With a huff, Robert turns back to the window to seek her out again. And there she is: a soft flower in her dark hair which is piled upon her head. He speaks quieter. "I don't like to see her hurting. She's sacrificed a great deal for us and I want her to be happy here."

He stands at the window minutes longer without a response from his mother. Feeling the awkwardness, he turns slowly back to her to see her eyeing him knowingly, suspiciously. He falters under her stare. "What?"

"Oh dear."

"What?" He steps toward his mother irritably.

"You've fallen in love with her."

Robert laughs contemptuously, but averts his gaze. He can see his mother shaking her head.

"You have. Don't deny it."

He walks quickly to the table and pours himself a cup of tea while he speaks, busying himself so she won't notice his anxiousness. "Mama, you're imagining things. I don't lo-" When he finds he can't finish the statement, he changes his words, "That is, I don't want you to treat her harshly. She deserves some respect."

"I see."

"Mama-"

She continues without even acknowledging he's tried to stop her. "Though I suppose falling in love with your wife is rather convenient…"

Robert bristles, rather uneasy in the way she's speaking of Cora. After all, Cora is sweet and strong, and so very smart, she doesn't deserve to be spoken about in such a way. She deserves to be praised and…he…. He feels his movements still, his eyes fixed on some uncertain spot in front of him. His heart quickens in his chest and after an indiscernible amount of time he feels his mother's hand press his arm. He looks at it as she speaks.

"Have you told her?"

He shakes his head dumbly. His mother sighs. "If you want her to be happy, you'll tell her."

Robert opens his mouth to speak when both he and his mother turn at her entrance.

"Tell me what?"

He stares at her, a vision in blue, his beautiful wife, and feels his knees threatening to buckle. "It's nothing," he manages, and his mother sighs exasperatedly.


	5. Elation

**Elation***

It hurt. Pain. Physical pain that pulsed behind her ribs. And it mocked her.

George was two weeks old today. Tiny, sweet, George who had brought such joy with him, such elation, none of which she now felt. Her chest was too heavy to feel anything but the pain. The pain from the hollowness of where her heart had been.

In the dim light of her room, the curtains drawn, the fireplace cold though autumn had begun its chilled gusts in the promise of winter, she laid silent and still. Silent and still as a tomb.

She had no concept of time, no concept of whether it was morning or late afternoon. She had refused Anna when she came bearing another black dress. She had refused her again when she came bearing a tray of warm food.

Anna was the only one who came to see her now. Anna, and of course, Mama.

It was the familiar sounds of her mother at her door that roused her from her restless contemplation.

"Mary?" She could her hear call softly for her, but she didn't look up at her. She did not lift her head from the pillow on which it rested. "Mary, darling. Nanny is asking after you. She has George in the library."

Her mother paused in what felt like hope. It was in vain. "Won't you come down?"

Mary remained silent. Perhaps if she stayed absolutely silent Mama would go away. Perhaps if she stayed absolutely silent she herself would just disappear, dissolve. She'd filter through the duvet beneath her, the pain in her breast staying behind, like a stone through a sieve. She closed her eyes.

There was the metallic click of the door latching into place, and then the gentle swaying sound of her mother's dress. The mattress of her bed dipped very slightly from her mama's slender form. Mary still did not look.

She was grateful Mama stayed quiet, only sitting next to her for some time. She was quiet, quiet, quiet for some moments more, until at last, the silence growing louder around her, she spoke.

"I know how it hurts-"

"No." Mary bit at her tongue. She knew her mother was only trying to help; Mama had lost loved ones before, Grandfather and, then, of course Sybil. But she didn't know. Mama didn't know how _this_ hurt. She still had Papa. She still had a father for her children. "No," Mary repeated lowly. "You don't."

They fell into another silence, but Mary was less grateful for this one. It allowed her mind to move, to wander, to conjure up images of only two weeks before. Of Matthew.

There was a burning in the small bridge of her nose, and a stinging behind her closed eyes.

"He was so happy," she heard her voice say. It sounded far away, as if it didn't belong to her at all. "I'd never seen him so happy." She opened her eyes and looked out into her room, letting the image of Matthew, smiling and holding her son - their son - vanish.

"No, Mama," her voice said again. "I won't go down."

The velvety smoothness of her mother's hand touched her arm. It was cold. "Darling..."

"I won't." At last she brought her eyes to her mother, staring at her for a moment before bringing her gaze up to the ceiling once more.

The mattress moved again. Her mother leaned down, slowly, but stopped. In lieu of what Mary was sure to be a kiss, there was a gentle caress of her hair and a stroke of her mother's soft knuckles on her cheek.

Mary didn't notice her mother leaving the room. She didn't notice the pain that throbbed in her chest. She only wanted him, her want, her need, eclipsing every other sense.

She closed her eyes again and saw him. Matthew, holding up his son, smiling broader than she'd ever seen him smile before, happy. Matthew had been so happy.

* * *

_thanks to Cobert Fan for the prompt - xoxo_


	6. Freedom

**Freedom**

She took another generous sip of her wine, the quiet burn remaining in her throat long after she had swallowed it down. The fire threw dancing shadows on the walls of the library and the heat felt comforting on her skin. But she wouldn't be comforted. Not now.

Robert collapsed onto the sofa near her, letting out an exhausted breath. Cora didn't turn and look at him. She stayed absolutely still, holding her glass of wine, staring into the fireplace. It was very unlike her.

Robert studied his wife carefully. Her dress was blue, deep, deep blue, but in the darkness of the library it appeared to be black. She looked so fragile there, standing in front of the flames.

"I'm happy to report that the meeting with Drewe went better than expected. Even Mary seemed pleased."

He looked for her reaction. There was none.

"And I'll admit that Tom did quite well."

Still nothing. She remained silent and still, eerily so. Robert's eyes roamed over her and the glass of wine in her delicate hands. The color looked like old blood in the light of the flames. He allowed another moment of quiet before he grew ever more uncomfortable.

"Cora?"

The sound of her name woke her from her thoughts and she turned suddenly to see him, her eyes wide and mouth tight.

"Is everything all right? Only you look as if you're miles away."

"Oh." She forced a smile and took a deep breath. "Yes. I'm alright."

His expression suggested that he didn't believe her. "Really, Cora, please say if-"

"I'm alright." She moved to put the glass onto the small table near the fireplace, it suddenly feeling heavier than she had noticed before. As she placed it there, another thought crept into her mind and she stood there, staring into the wine.

Robert watched her get lost in the secrets of her mind once again, the sight of it making him feel uneasy and alarmed. He quietly rose from the sofa and walked to her, standing behind her and placing a small touch on her arm. At contact, she took in a sharp breath and turned around, looking directly at him, but not speaking.

With furrowed brow, he observed her features, but couldn't draw out a single word for the expression she wore: pensive, afraid, hopeful, tired? He wasn't sure. He slowly brought his fingers back to her arm and touched her again, "Cora -"

"Why do you love me?"

He blinked. "Wh-what?"

Her voice was exact and severe, "Why do you love me?"

Robert's heart quickened behind his ribs. "I can't say…I…I'm not sure I can-"

"But you do?" She searched his eyes.

"Do what?"

"But you do love me." Something in the glistening of her eyes made his stomach lurch.

"Cora, what is this about?"

She didn't answer him, only took several more breaths before she spoke again. "Kiss me." She pushed herself into him, pressing her open mouth against his.

He pulled himself away, however, unsure of what was happening. "Cora?"

"Kiss me," she repeated desperately, a cracking in her voice. "Show me, Robert. Make me feel how much you love me."

She fell into him again, but he didn't allow her to kiss his lips. Grasping her shoulders, her held her away from him enough so he could study her eyes. Concern was etched deeply across his face. After a moment, he removed one hand and brought it to her face, slowly rubbing her cheekbone with his thumb. And then his other hand went to her hair, holding her head still and upright to look at him.

He brought his face closer to her own and whispered to her. "You know how much."

She shook her head, fighting back tears.

He repeated himself, his hands remaining around her face. "You know how much. So very, very much that I…"

He locked eye contact with her, "My dearest…"

She tried to look away, tears beginning to fall disobediently, but he held her steadfast, resting his forehead against her own, tears springing to his own eyes.

"Robert," she choked out. "I'm so sorry…"

He only shushed her, now knowing all too well what it was about. "Don't. You've nothing to be sorry of…"

"But what I did-"

He narrowed his eyes. "You did nothing that cannot be forgiven. Now please, let's be free of it, hmm?"

She only shook her head. "I can't."

The tears came faster now, along with her soft cries, and he took her into his arms and held her close. He held her tightly, her body small, slender in his embrace.

He brought his hands back to her face and pulled it up to him once more. After brushing away a tear, he kissed her softly, feeling every bit of their lips touching, tasting every bit of her lips' familiar saltiness.

She felt whole here, in his arms, more whole than she had felt in weeks. And she realized that this is what mattered more. This mattered more than the physicality of their relationship. Standing here, raw and exposed, was more than the nights spent sweating against one another. The nights spent skin-to-skin. The nights that had slowly become routine over the years: a way to unwind, to fall asleep more quickly.

And the passion she had wanted, the flirtations that she thought she missed, she hadn't really missed. The moment that man had moved to kiss her on that London street, she had realized that. She wanted this more. The quiet, soft, but burning way her stomach flipped when Robert looked at her. The way her body responded when her husband kissed her, his lips barely even touching her own. The girlish butterflies the charmer had induced were never really about him, but her own insecurities. The yearning Robert induced was different. The peace he induced, the safety, the freedom to stand here and cry in his arms. It's what she needed, really.

He let his hands linger on her skin and it caused her lips to quiver. This. This was how he showed her he loved her. And it was more than she could measure.


	7. Grateful

**Grateful***

The bed was cold. Why was the bed always so cold? It was only late September, the leaves had only just begun to turn, autumn barely begun. Why, then, must the bed be cold? She listened as a fire crackled to her right, but it remained in its place. Its warmth did not reach her. No warmth would reach her. Not tonight. Not after what was said today. Not after it had confirmed her deepest, and most secret, fear.

Her fingers stretched across her abdomen.

Further into the coolness of her bed she sank, and heavily she sighed. She closed her eyes. She demanded her thoughts to leave her be, to evaporate, but they would not. Instead they multiplied in number. They grew louder. They turned through dark corners and peered into even darker places, tempting her, persuading her, giving her the opportunity to cry. An open invitation, an invitation that was hard to refuse. And as her eyes began to burn behind their lids, and as her nose began to take in more air that felt heavy in her chest, she covered her brow with her empty hand.

What if it was another girl? What if all those silly women who looked down their noses at her were right? What if Robert would never have a son...what if she would never give him a son? A boy. An heir.

Words, words, everyone's words came rushing like a torrent toward her:

"_Of course, you'll have another if it isn't."_

"_Odd, there are always so many boys in families like ours."_

"_They do say the third time is luckiest."_

Cora had grown adept at lying. At smiling. At saying, "Oh, but we'll be pleased should it be another girl."

But it wasn't for what she silently prayed, the words pressed she pressed between her palms at church.

A son.

An heir.

A little lord.

Letters from her mother, in attempts to reassure her only said that there was still time. Violet even, in a rare act of compassion toward Cora, mentioned how fond she was of Patrick. But Cora had heard what she meant. Patrick, the heir, should Cora fail. Should Cora fail at doing her duty.

Suddenly, the weight of every month for the last three years fell heavy on her heart. Every disappointing twenty-eight days, when she'd shake her head and Robert would only nod or smile optimistically. "In time, dear. It'll happen in time." But then that look would follow. The look that said just the opposite of the words he spoke. The look that questioned and wondered, would they get a third chance?

Now Cora wondered, should this one be another failed attempt, would they get a fourth?

Then, as quickly as her thoughts had begun to spin and weave inside her mind, they stopped.

A gentle flutter quickened beneath her hand, a tiny stirring, and she opened her eyes.

Her baby.

She felt the corners of her mouth curl at the sensation. Her little baby. The little one rolling and stretching inside of her would soon be swaddled snuggly in her arms. Its little nose would be sweet and small. Its little mouth would be pink and it would smile in its sleep. Its soft little fingers would grasp at her own, and her heart would swell. It would swell, whether it be a boy, or a little girl.

Another small movement and Cora swallowed.

"Thank you," she mouthed. Tears flooded her eyes. "Thank you," she prayed to Whoever it was who listened, to Whoever it was that allowed this little miracle to happen.

"Thank you."

* * *

_Thank you to lanbans (on Tumblr) for this prompt._


	8. Hurt

**Hurt**

Thirst. Extreme thirst. For whisky. For brandy. For scotch. For something strong and dry that would make the events of the past few days more bearable, tolerable, or perhaps even blurred. And he would find it in the library.

With clear purpose, Robert opened the door to his stately sanctuary and swooped inside. His eye immediately focused on the decanter on the table that shimmered in the flickering firelight, and he started for it. But there, in the periphery of his vision, he noticed her. He stopped, turned, and looked at her standing in front of the hearth, tall and slender, a wordless expression hanging heavily on her features.

In truth, he was surprised at her, but he didn't allow it to show. Instead he coolly walked to his intended destination and lifted the heavy glass stopper.

"Robert?" Her voice seemed as heavy as her countenance, but he didn't turn around.

"Robert, please-"

"I thought you'd gone up," he tossed over his shoulder carelessly, nearly rudely, unable to curb the harshness of his tone. It was met with an uncomfortable pause, as if she hadn't really expected an answer.

"No," her response was softened. "I wanted to speak with you."

Robert filled his glass again. He drained it as quickly as he'd poured it. As the dry burn coated the back of his throat, he looked into the glass. "I don't think so."

"Robert-"

"There's nothing to be said." He shook his head, and with more force than he anticipated, he returned the glass to the table and turned on his heels.

He was done. Completely done and not willing to think of it any longer. Sleep. Rest. More whisky. Anything to dull the pain of what he now realized.

"But Robert-"

"No."

"If you would just-"

"No."

"Please!"

He remained silent now and started for the door. Escape.

"Oh, for God's sake. Just listen to me!"

It was the hissing, exasperated tone of her voice that triggered it - that triggered the onslaught of words he'd been trying to swallow down with the liquor, the words he knew better than to say but couldn't be helped.

"Listen to what, exactly, Cora? Listen to how you flirted with that man and how very sorry you are about it all now? Listen to how it isn't your fault? He pushed in? Listen to how it's even my fault? No. No! I won't. I can't listen to anything else. Not from you."

And as he was about to fly from the library, something impeded his departure. He stilled his quickened steps.

He brought his eyes back to her, his wife. She'd dropped heavily onto the bench there, in front of the flames and stared into the middle distance. Her eyes, though shadowed in the darkened space, clearly shimmered with tears. Her lip trembled.

He realized what had stopped him from leaving: Guilt.

"Cora-"

"You're right." Her voice was small and defeated. "You don't want to hear anything from me." She breathed easily as she paused, but when her eyes met his, he saw and understood the pain in them. "You always make that quite clear." She looked away into the fire.

He turned toward her with a deep exhale. "That isn't true."

Cora brought her tired eyes back to his. "Isn't it?"

He watched her as her face fell again; he watched her swallow down the pain he had caused her. His chest stiffened and ached.

Robert settled on the sofa across from her with a sigh and rested his elbows on his knees. Her loveliness glowed near him; he could feel it even though his eyes were not upon her. But it wasn't her beauty that caught him so. It was merely herself. It was the very air around her. The way her breathing was soft and quiet, and the way she smelled faintly of lavender and powder. With a sickening drop of his heart, he knew he had taken it all for granted. He wanted so much to reach out and touch her, to take her hand, to stroke her cheek, but he would not. There was something there. There was something in between them that was cold and hard. Something that hurt him whenever he endeavored to think of what it could be. But of course he knew. It had been himself.

It was still himself.

When he came back to present, he felt with a flood of warmth that Cora had been watching him. She moved her eyes over his face cautiously, but with familiarity; the ache in them was palpable.

Before she spoke, she averted her gaze slightly, looking at his hands. "I didn't want him there-"

Robert grimaced, silencing her. "Please," he furrowed his brow, "let's not speak of that. Anything but that."

They were silent together for moments more, but this silence didn't have the strain of the others. Instead of hanging like a fog around them, it only breezed by, their touchless contact still intact. He felt her eyes still lingering on his fingers. "You were right."

Her quiet admission caught his attention.

"Perhaps I encouraged him, and if I did, I'm sorry."

"Please." He silenced her again. "Don't apologize."

Their eyes locked, and there was a voice in Robert's head that urged him to take her pretty face in his hands and kiss her soundly. The longer he listened, the more like his mother it sounded. The more like Mary. Their words echoed around his head. He shook it to silence them. He couldn't. There was too much that hurt.

Cora noticed and took in a breath. "Robert?"

"I'm tired." He looked again at his wife - his sweet, sad wife - and swallowed. He softened his voice. "We should both get some rest for tomorrow. The race and everything."

She only looked into his eyes hopefully then, and Robert couldn't sit there any longer. He wasn't ready for what she wanted. Even if he wanted it as well. His pride wouldn't allow him to, even if his conscience hungered for it.

He rose from the sofa and left her in the library. Maybe tomorrow would be better. Maybe he'd sit next to her. Maybe he'd talk with her. Maybe he'd hold her hand, the way his heart so longed to as he climbed the stairs to his dressing room.


	9. Impulse

**Impulse***

She eyed him as he drained his glass. He hadn't meant it. He hadn't meant the disparaging things he said about their future grandchild. She knew him too well for that. She'd knew him and she knew that what he'd said had been his defense. It had been his immediate impulse, however wrong. He'd mindlessly offended his daughter's unborn child to hide his hurt. The hurt he felt at losing his own child. His baby. Their baby.

And that's why she teased him. That's why she'd told him to cheer up. She wasn't gone forever, just older. And married. And living in Ireland.

She sighed to herself.

"Robert," she said knowingly. "You don't have to act as if you aren't sad. I am, too, in a way."

Robert turned toward her, his empty glass glinting in the dim light. "I'm not sad," he boomed unconvincingly. "Why should I be sad?"

Cora smiled in quiet understanding. "Oh, my dear..."

"It was Sybil's choice to marry him, though why she must bear his child…"

"Oh..." Cora groaned, wagging her head. "Don't be ridiculous, Robert."

He worked his way back over to the table and lifted the decanter, though he did not poor any of it out. His features were hard, and his grip on the crystal he held threatened it to crack. "I'm not being ridiculous, Cora. It's Sybil. Sybil is being ridiculous! And irresponsible! To make a decision like that, to decide to have a child, when I doubt they can even find the means to support it. Cora, it's impulsive."

Cora, however, could only shake her head as she rested on the stool in front of the flames, Sybil's letter still lying open on her lap. She watched her husband pour his drink and she raised one brow. "Rather like us, isn't it?"

Robert grimaced, and Cora lifted her chin. "They're rather like us, aren't they, Robert?"

"They aren't like us, Cora," he said with an annoyed side-eye to her. "Mary was meticulously planned for…"

"And Edith?" Cora smirked. "Was Edith so meticulously planned for?"

Robert turned back to the table and lifted the decanter again, groaning all the while.

Cora, meanwhile, folded her hands in her lap, her fingers brushing her daughter's note. "Because if I rightly recall, Dr. Warren told us to wait. Mary's birth had been difficult…"

Robert rolled his eyes, "We were different…"

"He said to give myself at least six months' time to heal before we tried again…"

"We were different, Cora. Older."

Cora shook her head. "They aren't so unlike we were. We may have had more help, more privilege, but we were as young as they are now. If not younger." She paused as Robert frowned, the way he did when he knew she was right. Cora continued. "And we were in love…"

With a small inhale, Robert looked more fully at her.

"…like they are now," Cora finished quietly.

At last, Robert fell silent. He dropped onto the sofa near her, and she tipped her head toward him.

"Robert, Sybil loves him."

"Sybil's impulsive."

"She loves him."

Again, silence.

"And," Cora smiled, clutching the note closer to her, her daughter's loops and curls of letters as familiar as her gentle expressions, "she's going to make such a good mother."

She was pleased when Robert's posture changed slightly, when his mouth became softer, and when his shoulders relaxed the smallest bit. And then he allowed a smile. "She will, won't she?"

Cora nodded. "A grandchild, Robert." She grinned wider, "We're having a grandchild. Can you believe it?"

She let out a small laugh when Robert's hand grasped at her own.

"No," he admitted, his own smile growing wider. "No, I cannot."

Feeling him relax near her, feeling him grip her hand and seeing him smile had done it. She couldn't quite help herself, and so she said it. "A little Irish grandchild."

She pressed her lips mirthfully when Robert looked her way.

"Don't…" he warned, and Cora had to laugh aloud. Shaking his head, he stood. "I'm going to bed."

Cora folded the note back into its envelope, images of small little bonnets, white lacy blankets, and tiny silver rattles all dancing around in her head.

"Well?"

Cora glanced up at the sound, Robert standing near the door.

"Aren't you coming?" Robert called, lifting his brow. "After all, it seems we have something to celebrate."

Cora laughed again. "Yes," she stood, and walked to him, taking his hand, "Grandfather."

Robert pulled her after him, laughing and grumbling under his breath all the way up.

* * *

_Thanks to marlinakoh (Tumblr acct) for suggesting this prompt :)_


	10. Juxtaposition

**Juxtaposition***

It had stormed the day Mary was born. A true storm. The rain had come down in sheets and there were rumbles of thunder in the distance. Cora remembered it now as if it had been a strange dream, the way Robert had paced around her bed, swearing that the doctor would never make it. But he had soon been ushered out, the doctor had come in, and she had given birth.

She remembered how she held Mary in her arms afterward, how, as she stared down at her new daughter's long perfect fingers and soft dark hair, a nurse had leaned down close to her ear, and said it lowly.

"Of all the days for a child to be born, lucky are those who see a storm."

Cora had barely noticed at the time. She had barely even looked toward the voice, hadn't paid it much mind. Cora only refocused her gaze upon her baby, marveling at the tiny miracle that she and Robert had created.

But now, on her way to the hospital, those whispered words resounded again and again in her head. Around her the air was bright, warm, and sparkling. The shafts of rays of the afternoon sun had begun to pour golden patches over the ground around her, and birds were chirping in the distance. White curtains from hospital windows fluttered softly in the gentle breeze. And Cora suddenly found she couldn't breathe.

_Of all the days for a child to be born, lucky are those who see a storm._

Her baby. Her daughter. Mary. She'd had a baby. Mary had had a baby, and the sun was shining.

The birth had gone perfectly; she'd had no complications whatsoever. The baby – Mary's son – was a little early, but Isobel had assured them he was healthy. He was strong. He was the future Earl. Isobel had been positively glowing there in the library. Robert had taken Cora's hand, and Mama had smiled, looking up at them all from her seat.

"We don't always get our just desserts."

No. No, Cora knew. We don't always get our just desserts.

A half an hour later, Cora's footfalls echoed throughout and around the white hallway. The white of it gleamed from the sunshine of the windows and the glare from it bounced around with the tap of her shoes. The noises typically heard in the hospital – the soft murmur of people speaking, the muffled laughter of nurses or of sweet baby cries – were strangely absent, and Cora's ears could only detect the noise of her footsteps and then, coming through stronger, the sound of Mary's voice from the door that remained open at the end of the hall.

Cora peered inside, and she grew cold. Nothing in Cora's life had been more difficult to behold. Not the time that Harold had broken his arm while ice-skating, the bone hitting at a grotesque angle, instantly bruised and swollen; not the impossibly small son she had caught a glimpse of before a nurse wrapped him in a blanket covered in her own bright blood; not even watching her youngest daughter die, strangling within her own body, Cora helpless to stop it, to protect her. None had been so bad. Nothing. Nothing had been so terrible as this, because nothing had been more beautiful.

With the afternoon sunlight pooling all around her in a heavenly glow, Mary sat up in her narrow bed, the tiny baby swaddled in her arms. Mary spoke evenly to him, and Anna near her, and she smiled – a warm, gentle smile. A mother's smile. The baby's tiny, perfect, hand held tightly to Mary's long finger.

After another moment of gazing at her daughter and grandson, Anna and Mary both looked up and toward her.

Cora realized that she must have made a noise, a sound, and then with a small start, realized that she had been quietly crying. She blinked her tears away and forced a grin.

"Mama," Mary invited. "Mama, come and see him. George."

Cora felt her feet carry her to her daughter's side, and she peered down at the infant she held.

"Where's Papa?" Mary asked, her voice warm with affection as she too gazed at her child. "I thought he'd be rather eager to be the first up to see his heir."

Cora pressed her lips, though her eyes remained on the child, on the way his eyelids moved the tiniest bit in his sleep.

Mary continued, not noting the silence. "Or has Matthew detained him?" Mary's eyes shifted up to her mother's at this, and Cora blinked back, again, the tears that burned anew. "Don't tell me they've already gone to celebrate the good news."

Cora swallowed. Hard. She shook her head.

She watched Mary's features fall, gradually, almost one by one, as if the realization of what was wrong began to drown her. Her mouth fading, cooling, drooping into a slack line; the blooms of her cheeks paling, her eyes losing a sparkle that shimmered there moments before.

"No." Cora's voice sounded so far away. "Mary…"

The next expression was fear. "What's happened? Where's Papa?"

Cora took one step closer to her, and she sat on the bed, reaching a trembling hand for her daughter's arm. The baby's blanket was soft on her fingers. "Perhaps it best if Anna takes George for now."

"What?" Then panic. "No. Why? Mama you're scaring me. Where's Papa?"

"Mary…"

Anna moved to take him, but Mary shook her head. "No, Mama. Tell me. What's happened? Where's Papa?"

Cora swallowed again, unable to smooth the crack in her voice. "There's been an accident-"

Mary sat straighter, held her child tighter, her mouth moved to ask once more the question she had repeated. But then could not.

Her eyes flew to the door, and Robert walked into the room.

The next moments moved languidly, and densely.

Cora looked away from her child. She looked away from Mary and toward the open window as Robert came further into the room. She kept her eyes out at the bluest sky, as Robert told Anna to take the baby. She kept her eyes on the soft, white wisps of clouds as Robert took their daughter's hand in his, as she silently shook her head. Cora kept her eyes on the glittering sunlight that danced across the ground as Robert whispered, "It's Matthew, my darling."

And then, it was as if time did not move at all.

She held Mary in her arms. She stared down at her daughter's long fingers as they clutched Cora's sleeve and at her dark hair, the simple chignon that Anna must have done for her not too long ago, but now seemed like another lifetime. Across the room, a nurse leaned down close to where Anna sat with George, and spoke lowly, but Cora could only hear the voice from thirty years gone by.

_Of all the days for a child to be born, lucky are those who see a storm._

Her eyes drifted back to the window, to the golden-lit world, the white curtain fluttering gently in the warm breeze, and she held her daughter tighter, letting her cry.

* * *

_Thanks to MercedesCarello for the lovely prompt :)_


	11. Kick

**Kick***

It'd been his fault, all his fault, and he knew it. Guilt twisted inside his chest, cramping it and nauseating him as he reclined in the chair near his window. The golden afternoon sunlight hit the midnight blue snuffbox in his case and it glinted in his eyes. He sighed. It had been a beautiful day out, a perfect day, and everything had been going so well - so terribly well - before it had happened. They'd laughed. She'd smiled back at him as she galloped teasingly before him, the soft, crisp breeze whipping at the dangling, dark green ribbons of her hat. But then…then he'd shown-off. He'd raced past her, and he'd shown-off, with her calling after him all the while.

"But I can't ride too quickly."

He'd only sped forward.

"Oh, Robert. Wait! Please."

But he hadn't. She'd been laughing, after all, and he only wanted to show her - he'd only wanted to impress her, though why, he couldn't be sure.

So he'd taken the jump…and her horse had followed.

To see her being thrown from a horse - for her slender, delicate frame to be thrown to the ground from her horse - had been nearly traumatizing to see. He'd turned back to see her expression after his jump, to see her features alight with some sort of delight at what her new husband could do. But instead he turned just in time to see it, to see her thrown, and he had gasped at the sight. With a kick, her horse had stopped short and thrown her onto the wet autumn earth; and with a kick, his heart had stopped and he'd thrown himself down to gather her up in his arms.

He'd carried her back, muddy and bruised as she was, and the doctor had been called.

And so here he sat now, staring at the glare of his favorite snuffbox, repeating over and over in his mind what he'd done. He could hear the muffled noises of Cora and her maid through the dividing door, and then the eventual metallic click of her door - the metallic click that meant she was alone again.

Robert sat up straighter in his chair, straighter, and furrowed his brow in consideration. What did the doctor say? What if she was really hurt? He sat even straighter, his arms now bracing the side of the chair, preparing to lift him up and toward her. But...he stopped. What if she didn't want to see him? He could feel his features dropping one by one. He wouldn't quite know what to do if she didn't want to see him.

He swallowed. There was a sudden lump in his throat, the thought of not being able to see her suddenly inciting a small panic inside of him. But why? Why should he feel this way? Why did he feel any of this sort of guilt and panic and worry - such worry - over her?

Robert sat still for a moment. And then a moment more. A moment, a moment, and then he knew.

Oh, God. He knew.

And as if his feet had carried them of their own accord, and as if his hand had turned the knob of the dividing door without his conscious assent, he was within her space. He was within her room and he was looking upon her in her bed, a bruised and battered beauty bathed in the creams and whites of her gown and robe.

Her eyes flitted up at his entrance. But she did not speak. And he did not speak, not at once anyway. He only managed to smile contritely; he only managed to take one more step toward her, but no more. In the warm light of the tired sun, he could see the scratches on her skin - her face - and the plum colored mark on her cheekbone. And as he stared at her longer, she seemed to grow smaller, until at last she looked down into the book she'd held open in her lap.

He took one step more. "How do you feel?"

She shook her head, and she closed her eyes. "Embarrassed."

"What?" His brow creased; he took two more steps forward.

"Embarrassed and terribly foolish."

There was another cramp inside his chest, another wave of nausea. "No," he managed softly as he strode across the room. He sat on the edge of her bed and surprised himself by reaching for her hand.

It surprised him even further when she took it.

"You aren't foolish." He shook her hand slightly. "The foolish one is me."

She opened her mouth to say something, but he spoke ahead of her, silencing her with his admission.

"I should not have taken the jump, only I let my pride think for me, decide for me."

"But…pride?" He noticed how slightly, so very slightly, she had held his hand more firmly. "What? What had you to be —"

"— I wanted to impress you." He'd blurted it suddenly, and felt his face flush hotly. Even after being married to her for six months, six months full of thousands of blushes, he felt this one may be the worst yet. This moment was indeed the worst yet because he now knew. He knew - in looking at her, in looking at her pretty face - why he so wanted to kiss every scrape and scratch and purpling bruise that lay upon her skin.

But of course he wouldn't. He couldn't…somehow he couldn't. Not when she looked up at him that way. His heart fluttered around too painfully when she looked up at him that way. And in spite of what he knew he felt now, he also felt fear. Fear. And it was fear at what he knew he felt.

She gazed warmly up at him, her hand so soft and smooth beneath his palm. "But Robert…" she smiled and he felt his lungs give way. "You needn't try to impress me."

He tried to breathe again; he tried to do anything that might help the way his chest felt all aflame, but aflame in the loveliest way he'd ever known.

His hand was clasped more tightly. "I chose you, after all, didn't I?"

And at this Robert laughed, pulling her hand to his lap. "Yes." He looked at her fingers in his own and smiled again. "Yes, I suppose you did."

* * *

_Thanks to MercedesCarello for the prompt :) _


	12. Lace(d)

_A/N: Written as a speculative drabble to Simon Bricker's character_

* * *

**LACE(d)**

The way she laughed. The way she lowered her lashes, blushing. The way the candlelight set a glow to her skin, the skin he had kissed every inch of. Soft, smooth, warm to the touch of his lips.

Cora. His Cora.

Robert swallowed the whisky he held in his mouth. It burned his throat in a sad, satisfying sort of way. Much the same way the images of his wife at dinner burned in the forefront of his mind. It was obvious, so very painfully obvious, to everyone. That man had flirted, overtly flirted, with Cora. And Cora had flirted back.

Robert took another gulp, the heat of the liquor unsettling in his stomach.

Cora had been alone with that man. She'd been out with him past dark, alone, and Robert hadn't paid it any mind. He tried to convince himself that it was because he trusted her, because he knew there had been nothing to fret over, but it wasn't entirely true. He hadn't minded because he had neglected to. He hadn't given Cora a second thought. When she had come back to Rosamund's late, flushed and anxious, he realized he had forgotten she had even been gone at all.

Fool. He was a fool. Cora was intelligent, sweet, and intoxicatingly alluring. And she had been alone with that man who was so blatantly seductive.

He swallowed again, but it wasn't the liquor that made his esophagus catch flame in its wake. It was guilt. It was regret. It was fear, fear that he had lost the very thing that he now realized held his life together, and had all along. Cora. It wasn't the tenants, it wasn't the committees, it wasn't his service to King and country. It was Cora. It had always been Cora.

His heart beat hard against his ribs and he gripped his glass.

He loved her. He needed her. He wanted her.

He put down the glass and, in a rather hazy blur, found himself opening the door to their room, which was uncharacteristically dark. His eyes sought out the familiar shadowy figure of her curves, her sleeping form, in the bed. He traced over the rise of her legs and hip, the fall of her little waist. He traced over the curve of her cheek. He traced over and over her, his mind masochistically picturing those curves intwined with someone else. That man.

The hurt he felt was heavy and dense, especially so because he knew he had been the one to blame. He was still the one to blame.

With a swallow, he went to her, his eyes now adjusted to the darkness, and touched her. Her shoulder. Her bare shoulder. He touched her softly with his thumb and then, as he had done so many times before, his lips.

She took a breath in and hummed. Not a hum of pleasure, or even acknowledgement, but rather of sleep. She was asleep and dreaming. Was it about him?

His chest constricted. He kissed her shoulder again and she moved her head. He kissed her again and she moved her legs. Now once again, and her eyes fluttered open. She furrowed her brow.

"Robert?"

But he didn't hesitate at her confusion. He kissed her lips. He kissed her lips and moved over her body, suddenly desperate to have her, to take her body, the body she had given him all those years ago. He suddenly felt desperate to make love to her. To make love. Love. The emotion that now ate away at his pride and his stoic nature. He had to show her, he had to make her feel what he felt for her, the feelings he had neglected to show her. The feelings he neglected to say.

He kissed her, hard, furiously, pouring every churning emotion he felt into it. He kissed her and gripped her wrists. He kissed her. Hysterically.

But she didn't reciprocate the urgency. She didn't reciprocate the need. In fact, she recoiled beneath him. She pulled away and Robert felt his heart drop from his chest.

"Stop." She looked confused, shocked, worried. And she looked scared. "What are you doing?"

Robert just breathed, his face mere inches from her. She wiggled a wrist that he still held in his hand.

With a shake of her head, her expression lost the shades of confusion and fear he saw earlier. But now there was another. Sadness. "You're drunk," she whispered, more to herself than him. "Please, get off-"

"I'm not." The words had escaped his lips before his mind had even assessed them. "I'm not drunk."

She studied his face with a hard expression.

He spoke again. "I'm not drunk, but I am…" He swallowed and searched her eyes, her sad eyes that looked up into his. "I am sorry."

"Well," Cora averted her gaze. "It's alright-"

"No." Robert realized she didn't understand. She didn't catch his meaning. "I'm not sorry for, for this. But rather…" His voice trailed off and he let out a long sigh. A very long sigh. When she didn't respond, merely looked up at him again, deeply into his eyes, he felt broken. Perhaps this was it. This was the moment he felt so surely would never come for them. The moment that they became like everyone else they knew. Cold, unfeeling, together because of duty and to avoid gossip. "Never mind."

He moved away from her as quickly as he came to her and with the same urgency, but this time it was to escape. He wouldn't cry here.

"Robert?"

He could hear her, but wouldn't pause.

"Robert, please."

He stopped. But he couldn't turn to face her.

Her breath was heavy behind him, and he could hear how still she sat, how she struggled to keep her voice from wavering, and then he heard the tears.

"Please. Say it."

He closed his eyes. This was it. The precipice.

"I'm sorry." It came out clearly, though his throat felt strangled.

Silence.

"Not that." Cora's voice was quiet. "You don't have to say that."

Robert turned around, then, and stared. His wife sat up in the center of the bed, stiff and still. He knew. He knew what it was he should say. He knew it was the words he rarely said. The words that he had previously found to be simply understood without having to be said. But apparently he had been wrong.

"I thought you knew." He mumbled aloud. When he realized he had spoken, he enunciated further. "I thought you knew that I care for you. And I realize now that I was wrong." He looked at her. "I do love you, Cora. Whatever you may believe. I do. I know I haven't, perhaps, shown it. But I do." He shook his head. "I love you."

He watched as her chin wobbled with his words. Tears left her eyes again.

He looked at his feet.

"I only hope…" he couldn't finish the thought. He couldn't finish it without seeing her, his beautiful wife, in that man's arms, and smiling.

"Robert," her voice was strangely guttural, and he looked down into her eyes. She opened her mouth to say more, but as quickly as he thought she would, she closed it again.

He wanted to retreat, to turn, to hide in the darkness of his dressing room, but he wouldn't. He couldn't. He needed Cora to know. He needed her to know, even if it were to be for naught. He wouldn't give up.

He stepped slowly to the bed, Cora watching his every step, until he was near her again.

He steadied his nerves and brought his hand up, and up, to her hair. He laced his fingers through it and choked at the whimper it elicited from his wife.

"I love you."

She leaned into his hand and then, surprising him, grasped his wrist. She tugged it. She guided him atop of her. Her eyes were wet.

"Oh, Robert."

And for the first time in such a long time, too long, longer than he liked to admit, they made love. Love.


	13. Misery

**Misery**

What was it that her mother had said? Smart girls don't die of it. She didn't understand what she meant then. But now? Now she understood. She knew what it was and she knew that she was dying.

She pulled the sheet closer to her chin and stared up into the darkness of her room, her eyes making shapes and images out of the nothingness they saw. His rhythmic breathing was beside her, filling the empty spaces her sense of sight left blank.

In then out. In then out.

There was always a soft whistle at the exhale of his breath. She knew this about him and found it oddly intimate. How could she know the patterns of his slumbering breath when he barely spoke to her during the day?

But never mind that. She convinced herself to close her eyes and be content with his presence beside her now. She knew he wouldn't be there when she woke. No. He only slept off the satisfaction of their union for maybe a half an hour before slipping into his room. Like a thief in the night.

She fought the thought that came next, but it resurfaced in her mind as it always did. She wish he'd stay here beside her. She wish he'd hold her afterward, instead of rolling off of her and sighing. She wish he'd kiss her. Really kiss her, on the mouth, as he moved within her. But he never did.

She had been a fool tonight. She knew better than to say it, but something akin to masochism forced her tongue.

"I love you."

He couldn't pretend not to have heard her. It was clear that he had, for it startled him. His expression was unreadable for a moment, half-cloaked by darkness…before he plunged inside of her to perform his husbandly duty. She had to cover her mouth to keep from whimpering aloud in her misery, tears streaming silently down her face, wetting her hair. But it was dark and he wasn't paying attention to her. So, he didn't notice.

She knew he didn't love her. She knew it when she accepted the offer of marriage. But she had loved him. And she loved him now. So very, very much. Much more than she should.

She took a shaky breath and brushed dry the trail of a tear from her eye. Stop it, she commanded of herself. Stop. Remember, smart girls don't die of it.


	14. Nearness

**Nearness***

He watched the light flicker across her face, the golden sighs of the setting sun warming the pale of her skin. He watched her and the sight of her made him want to smile.

And he did...but not for long.

For the longer he watched her, the more he noticed. The more he noticed how she sat very still, too still, and how she stared through the window of the train, the Italian countryside running together in the space beyond her. It reminded Robert, albeit fleetingly, of the terribly amateur watercolor scenes that he had painted as a small boy. But of course he really paid no mind to the landscapes beyond the glass. The crests and dips of the grand, green mountains were only a distant blur beyond her, beyond the dark-haired and fair-eyed woman he'd married, beyond his new wife.

His wife. His spouse. His..._next of kin_.

Robert furrowed his brow.

It was odd that she was..._that_. It was odd that someone he'd known for only a little more than ten months could very well be his next of kin, the family member with whom he had the most intimate connection. But here he was, and there she was with the golden band that proved she was in fact a member of his family...that he had made this woman a member of his family.

They were family.

But in sitting there and watching the sunlight dance across her face, it made him realize how little he even knew her. Yes, she was, he supposed, his most immediate family member, the one to whom he'd been united to as man and wife, until death do them part, and yet he wasn't sure he knew her favorite color, her favorite food, or even her favorite thing they'd seen thus far, on this, their honeymoon.

No, no...he tried to appease himself, to assure himself that he wasn't all-bad…no, he knew _some_ things about her. Surely. He'd noticed small things. He'd noticed how her palms were always open when she rested them on her lap. He'd noticed the way she tilted her head, tipping it when she teased him or wanted to make a point. He'd noticed how she had lingered at the painting of Venus at the museum and how her lips had parted in her appreciation of it. Yes. Yes. He knew various things about her. He could list them out, one-by-one — she liked to read, she liked all sorts of white flowers and long strings of pearls — but...but he didn't know _her_. Not really. Not the way he should.

And what was more, he didn't know why she sat that way - silent and...rather despondent - on the seat beside him.

So in watching her, in staring at her really, he began to wonder what she could be thinking. What was she thinking of as she stared out into the slopes surrounding Florence? What was she seeing in the distant gaze she settled upon the tired world? He could at least be sure it wasn't the countryside bathed in sunset. No. It was something unseen by him. It was thoughts that darkened the blues of her eyes, thoughts that in turn darkened his own thoughts.

He thought, and he thought, and he thought, and he began to think that perhaps...perhaps it was him.

After all, he had been with her last night - even after six weeks of marriage he couldn't seem to call it anything other than 'been' and he grimaced inwardly when his mind conjured up the words 'made love' - but nonetheless, he'd been with her, and the boy in him knew it had marked the twentieth time it had happened. And each time it had happened it had been the same: Cora quiet and dutiful, Robert rather hurried and detached. Yes, each time had been the same except...except for the first. The first time, he knew, the first had been different.

It'd been different from the others.

The first time, she hadn't been quiet. He...he hadn't been detached. There had been that unmistakable connection he'd felt, the connection that could only happen between two people who have lost all barriers between them. The connection that meant that they were married, married, in the truest meaning of the term. The awkwardness, the shyness, the flushing cheeks at seeing her for the very first time had all simply paled in comparison to that spark of unity. And for the very first time since he'd set out for her, for the first time since he had decided that it was _her_ fortune that would save Downton, he felt that they could well and truly have a chance...a chance at - dare he say it - happiness.

But then, she'd told him. She'd whispered it against his ear, her voice so painfully sincere - painfully - and he knew he couldn't respond. He couldn't. He couldn't respond because he didn't love her. He...he didn't love her.

Or at least, at least he didn't think he did.

He brought his eyes back to her face, her soft, sweet features being kissed by the honey sun, and he suddenly ached. He ached. His heart beat hard against his ribs and his lungs felt heavy and cold.

His wife. His lovely wife.

How could she be so near, and yet...and yet so far away? Would it always be this way? Would he always feel her drifting further and further from him even as he somehow yearned to have her nearer and nearer?

He held his breath...

...and then...and then...

...he hadn't noticed he'd done anything until her eyes were on his. He hadn't noticed he'd moved at all until her lashes had flickered down between them and back up to him, a warm perplexity shimmering in the pale blue of her eyes. He hadn't noticed, but he had done it.

His hand, his fingers, had inched their way to her slender gloved hand and had gripped her fingers. He'd grasped it, squeezed it, held it tightly…and he still held it. He still held her hand, and she looked at him meaningfully, a small weight lifting from the corners of her lips and allowing them to curl ever so slightly.

Yes, he held her hand, and he realized, even to his own surprise, what it meant. It meant the very thing he'd been afraid of all these months. It meant that the thing he was so afraid of felt less frightening than he had imagined it. It meant that those things he had imagined, those assumptions that he had surmised, were wrong and he did in fact…well…

He held her hand, and he knew, he knew that he had no intentions of ever letting it...of ever letting _her_...go.


	15. Opaque

**Opaque***

Her chest felt too tight, too hard, too small. Her eyes burned threateningly, stinging her behind her lids. But Cora knew much better than to admit defeat. She wouldn't give him the satisfaction. So, stilling her quivering chin, she grinned. She grinned. She grinned, hiding the fury she felt beating away behind her ribs.

_Just say it. Just say it. Just say it!_

But of course he didn't. But of course he just swirled the brandy he nursed and stared into it as if it held much more interest to him than she did.

Robert.

She knew him better. She knew him so well, could feel what he felt so acutely, that this did nothing but anger her. Anger her!

He felt it. He felt it. Oh, for God's sake, he felt it...and he was much less opaque than he so believed.

* * *

He didn't want to sip it. He didn't want any more burn pouring down his throat as was coming up it - a hot bile rising at her poor attempt at feigning no offense at words he did not mean.

Of course he cared that _he_ returned. Of course he bloody-well cared that that twinkling flirt of a man would come prancing around the abbey once more. But he said what seemed most sensible to say...he said what seemed least..._conspicuous_.

"I don't see why he wants to come again so soon, when you don't know any more about the della Francesca than he, but do as you please."

"Very well."

Yes. _Very well_ had been her curt reply, and when he chanced to peek up at her, he saw the tight grin she wore, and his throat burned all the more from the sight.

He stood. He wanted to leave. But he couldn't quite move.

* * *

She narrowed her eyes slightly at the sight of him, standing tall before the grand fireplace, the ancient tomes all around them dancing in the throws of light.

He looked so handsome, so terribly handsome, that her anger buried itself deeper in her chest. She dropped her smile.

How could he possibly be jealous of him...of Mr. Bricker? Sure, he was certainly attractive, but Robert was well..._Robert_. She narrowed her eyes even more. She studied his thick hands, those fingers whose lines of history were creased where they'd gripped her hips and waist. Could he really be jealous of _him, _of someone who she'd only met one time? One singular time when they'd discussed nothing but the painting?

Unless... _Unless_...

Slowly, gradually, almost gently in a sort of cruel way, Cora felt her features soften one after another.

He...he wasn't jealous. Robert wasn't jealous and he...he really...he really didn't care. He really didn't think she could say anything worth mentioning that Mr. Bricker would care to hear.

And at this realization, at this bitter tasting deduction, Cora's anger evaporated from its pit and left her body cold.

* * *

He heard the noise and turned toward it. It was the sound of a wound, a moment of quick pain, but when he turned to it, there was only Cora sitting there. And she couldn't have made the noise.

He turned back to the flames. His fingers gripped the glass he held.

"I'm going up."

Her voice was quiet and he only heard it a moment after her words had been spoken, as if the smallness of her voice had made the words move more slowly than any other sound.

He turned slightly only in time to see the quick profile of her face in the fire's shadowy glow before she spun and left him alone in the library. All without wishing him a good night.

He helplessly watched the door as she closed it after her.

* * *

She said a small prayer at each step she took. _Please let him follow. Please let him follow. Please let him follow. _She had to know she was wrong. He did still care. He did. Surely. He did still want her because God knew how much she wanted him.

But all too soon the stairs ended. The steps leveled out onto the first floor, and Cora turned and looked down into the quiet darkness from whence she came.

She sighed and turned back again, walking now with purpose toward her room…their room. She'd likely be asleep before he came in.

* * *

Robert stared into his glass. He could finish the drink quickly and follow her up. He could catch her before she called Baxter. He could help her out of her dress himself. How long had it been since he'd done that?

But she was vexed. She was furious. He knew her, and he knew her well. Cora did not want him to follow her. She did not want him to hold her...not tonight.

So he wouldn't. No matter how much he wanted to.


	16. Pulse

**Pulse***

She hadn't forgotten the scent. Though it'd been months and months and months since she'd seen him, the scent had lingered on his pillow. His scent. The musky, faintly woody, smell that she'd gone to sleep to night after night, her nose buried in the softness of his pillow that she'd instructed her maid not to change.

But tonight...tonight was different. His scent was stronger, it was heavier, but still her sleep would not come. For her nose was buried in the crook of his neck, his skin still dampened from their intimacy. It was sticky with sweat against her own nakedness, but she did not move. She wouldn't move.

Her thoughts wandered to the distant African shore that'd he'd return to tomorrow after only three nights' leave. How he'd written in his letters of the heat of the place, the inescapable heat and humidity that made his pen slippery in his moistened fingertips as he wrote. Her thoughts wandered to what he left out of his letters, but what she knew to be true. How quiet it must be here, the gentle crackle of the fireplace compared to the buzz of insects around the diseased soldiers. How soft her bed must feel compared to the clay earth on which he slept, or the narrow fabric cot that rocked when he moved.

She had offered to listen, to be an open ear for all his worries to fall upon, but no. He'd declined to discuss it. Robert, who could talk to her about anything, had refused to describe it, to explain it, to even think of it. He had told her that he "didn't wish to talk about all that," and that...that had scared her. It had frightened her more than any horrors he could have described, for his lack of words validated all the fears she felt in her heart.

And she had even more fears now than before, for, though Robert had been gone for the better part of two years, the war he fought had suddenly become more real.

Lt. G. Addison had died. Gordon Addison. Gordon, the friend with whom Robert had attended Eton. The one who had teased Cora playfully only months after she and Robert were married. The one who had told her all the scandalous boyish things they'd gotten away with at school, leaving her to snicker at her husband across the room. He had died. And he had died only eight short days ago, in South Africa, to where Robert was heading back again in just a handful of hours. He had died far away, away from his wife and away from his children, alone with his men, from Typhoid. Typhoid - an enemy from which even Lord Lieutenants could not hide.

Cora breathed out against her husband's bare shoulder, lifting her head and studying his features in the firelight. She brought her eyes over the slightly chapped skin of his lips that she had kissed a thousand times over, the faint lines of them hallmarks of their twelve years together. She brought her eyes over the round tip of his nose, the same nose of little Sybil, their six-year-old daughter who had been shy at the sight of him. She'd only seen him a small collection of days since she'd been four. She brought her eyes over the soft line of his strong jaw that was relaxed in slumber, a slumber that she was sure to be the most peaceful he'd have in quite some time. The most peaceful he'd have until they let him come home again. _If_, a terrible voice whispered, _if_ he came home again.

Her throat tightened at the sight of him, and she nestled into his side once more, her face flush against his neck. She tried to press out all her thoughts, to only feel him beside her, beneath her, to only be aware of the sweet stickiness of his skin and the woody smell of his throat.

In the soft glow of her room, with his scent all around her, her skin pressed against his, and his warmth enveloping her and pulling her closer into him, she felt its steady rhythm. Its rhythm thumping out a constant_ rush-rush-rush_. His pulse. His living, beating pulse.

The dark, terrible voice asked if perhaps it'd be the last she'd ever feel it.

And with a sudden sharp pain, she nestled even further into him, and she wept.


	17. Qualify

Qualify*

She'd heard them once.

It had been late, after Anna had undressed her. She'd gone into her father's room to ask him, in private, if he'd allow her to ride out on the hunt alone. She'd rehearsed her arguments as she padded down the red carpet to his room: She was eighteen. She had been presented. She knew the grounds very well. But her preparations were all for naught.

For she'd gone in, quietly...and she'd heard them.

The moaning of the bed. The low drawing of breaths. The tender whispering of words she shouldn't hear.

No.

She shouldn't have heard it, she hated to have heard it, but still she stood there, staring at the crack of the dividing door, listening.

Listening to her parents make love.

Torturing herself.

Regaining sanity, she'd fled, noiselessly. She took shelter in her own room, the duvet pulled securely around her. Her bed was cool, the fire having long died away, and Mary was grateful for it. Somehow the dark made things easier. Somehow the dark helped soothe the queer ache that had now settled in her chest.

It felt like jealousy.

Quickly swallowing and suddenly teary-eyed, she took in a deep breath and held it.

Her mind began to shout images at her, images of her mother and father, images of them together as she always saw them: sitting comfortably in one another's company, exchanging knowing looks across the table at dinner, brushing their hands together slightly, perhaps accidentally, but never seeming to mind it - never flinching, never even looking at all surprised.

And then, there, lying in the dark, was a panic.

They loved one another.

Of course she knew this, of course she'd known it for some time. Her parents cared for one another, found happiness in one another, were even fond of one another, but somehow this was a new realization. Somehow love meant something so different now, so very different, that it frightened her.

It had been only days before that they'd suggested it, that her parents in the flickering light of her red room, sat with her and discussed it all. But she'd known, somehow, what they were going to say. She had known the failure of her parents, the failure of her mother's womb, the failure that she saw everyday in her mirror. For Mary had not been born a son. None of them had been. And, unless Mama, by some miracle, had another child, had a son, Mary understood that the title, the estate, her mother's fortune - all of it - would be given to Patrick. Cousin Patrick, her father's heir.

"But," her mother had whispered, and Mary felt she could hear the suggestion in the single word she'd said. "There is a way for you to still live at Downton, if you wish."

But now her heart beat too hard against her ribs. It seemed a simple solution. It seemed easy to do, Patrick was willing as was she...before...

A small vision of her parents from only earlier that morning illuminated her darkness: her mother and her needlepoint, her father and his book, sitting quietly together on the same red sofa. Mary had seen the way Papa turned up his chin when her mother spoke, and the small moment when they'd met one another's gaze.

It was nothing then. Mary saw it as nothing just hours ago, and now it was everything.

Familiarity. Contentment. Companionship.

Love.

Would she be able to sit beside Patrick that way? Would they exchange those small looks over their dinner plates? Would she not mind a brushing of his fingertips against hers, or would she find annoyance?

Would he whisper those things to her, those little hushed words her father was whispering to her mother?

Pulling the cover tighter to her chest, Mary rolled onto her side, the space between her lungs thick and heavy.

No. No. He wouldn't. And she wouldn't. She didn't love him. She had thought she did, thought she could, but now...now she knew she didn't. And now she knew she couldn't.

For she knew what love was. She suddenly knew what love was...and she wanted it.

She wanted to love her husband.

She had to love her husband.

Yes, she'd love her husband, and her husband would love her, too.


	18. Rambunctious

Rambunctious*

It sounded almost as if it were someone else's low rumbling laughter and not his own, yet Robert knew somehow that it was indeed his. He swallowed down the remnants of a chortle - that he knew not to what exactly - and lifted the thick glass he held to his lips. And then higher. And then higher still, producing nothing. He peered down into it and found it drained away, and he frowned.

_Bollocks._

"Speech! Let's have a speech!"

He was brought to attention by a slap on his back that lurched him forward slightly, and he whipped up and around to see who had done it. He was met with the shiny, grinning faces of his friends and a quick "hear, hear" encouraging him to say something, though he wasn't sure what about particularly.

He wasn't sure he was sure of anything, and he chuckled again to himself at the thought.

_Crickey._

"Get up there, Downton! Say a few words!"

"Let's hear it, Crawley! What say you of your impending nuptials?"

He nodded at the voices and, pushing his empty glass into someone's hand - who was that anyhow - he grabbed the back of a chair and climbed slowly up, slowly, almost falling off it when he misstepped.

There was a mixture of "oh!" and laughter from around him, and feeling rather proud he'd managed the small feat, Robert stood triumphantly in the chair, even lifting an arm to the heavens!

His friends cheered.

"My lords, ladies, and - and gentlemen," he began. The room below him swam in the flickering candlelight and oil lamps for a moment and Robert blinked emphatically to still the motion.

It didn't work.

"My lords, ladies, and gentlemen, too," he repeated and there was laughter.

"I believe you've already said that!"

"Yes and sadly we've no ladies here!"

"Oh now, let us not forget Cheltham!"

"Oh, so you're a bloody jester, are you William?"

More laughter, this time Robert noticed it was his as well, and he shook his head.

"I have come here, to - to London, tonight to speak to you of a - a matter of grievous importance." Some of the boys snickered. "In less than a fortnight, the man whom you know as Robert Crawley shall no longer exist."

Robert tried to bring his glass to his lips again, and was somewhat perplexed to find it gone. Sensing this, a friend from below offered him his own, and Robert took it, swallowed, and nodded.

"He shall no longer - no longer - exist. He'll be quite gone." He continued. "For you see, he..." it was here that he lifted his brows and curled the glass toward his chest, "he is getting married."

There was applause.

"He is marrying a great heiress!" He bellowed out, glass up high as cheers rose. "A great heiress from the far distant, savage, tropical shores of...of America! And he shall be no more." The whiskey much lower now, his voice followed suit, evening out. "The Robert Crawley you see before you will cease to exist in only a short time, for he will be a man made new by the sacred vows of matrimony."

"I think he'll be made a man by something else entirely!"

A roar of laughter and Robert joined in.

"You...you Brighton," he pointed the glass toward the man, "you're envious. I think."

Men agreed heartily. "As am I!" one shouted. And Robert laughed again.

"She's quite a girl, Downton!"

He hummed a smile into his drink.

"Our Lord Downton is to be a man!"

"At long last..." Laughter and cheers.

"And you're going to make her a woman, Crawley?"

More raucous laughter, but Robert didn't laugh. He swayed upon the sea of his boyish friends and frowned.

"That's right! You'll give her a little this-that, won't you?" And more laughter, but Robert shook his head.

"No."

"Do you know where to put it, Downton?" Cheltham jeered.

"Right between those long legs!"

Robert stepped-fell from the chair and pushed yet another drink into a friend's hand, and maneuvered his way from the crowd gathered for him.

"Where're you going, Crawley, ol' boy?"

"Say, the night's only just begun, Robert!"

"Perhaps he's an early-finisher?"

"Oh, I daresay she won't like that."

Laughter, loud laughter, and Robert felt heat under his collar. It wasn't from embarrassment or anxiety, it was anger. Terrible anger. He spun on his heel to find Adams who'd said it.

"Stop this!" He bellowed, and his friends all made a low "oh" sound in jest.

"Are we intimidating you?"

"Goodness, Crawley. If you let only some fellows' teasing get the better of you, however will you manage when it's Cora doing the teasing? I hear those Americans are quite good at it."

And he pounced.

His fists swung.

His friend, beneath him hollered for him to get bloody off him.

And he wrestled him.

Truthfully, Robert wasn't even aware that he'd been hitting the poor bastard until three of his friends pulled him from the floor, his knuckles already sore and aching. He stumbled a bit as he rubbed his hand, and took a chance at a look toward the man who was standing after him.

Adams bowed his head with a quick wipe of his bleeding nose, and pulled down his waistcoat with a slight jerk.

"Don't say those - those things about her, Adams." Robert stretched out his fingers. "She isn't some - some tart!" He cleared his throat and tried to stand straight; he found it much easier than before, anger sobering him immensely.

His friends around him were quiet, Adams even looking down at his feet.

"She is going to be Countess someday," he continued. He lowered his voice when he sensed no opposition to his words. "Cora is going to be my wife."

There was quiet.

"She's very nice," Robert added, frowning at the rather weak statement that fell from his loosened lips.

More quiet, until, at last, there was another small slap of his shoulder.

"Hear, hear."

Robert turned to his friend and grinned slightly when he was offered another glass. He took it.

"Say, I am sorry, ol' chap." Adams now, also patting his back. "Shall we call truce?"

Robert nodded and reached his aching hand to return the gesture. "Truce, it is."

"Good!" Adams lifted straight, there was more laughter, the group beginning to move down into another room of the club. "I say," Adams sniffed beside Robert as they followed after their friends. "I think perhaps you've broken my nose."

And both men laughed as Robert swallowed, in one gulp, his drink.


	19. Snowflake

SNOWFLAKE

Robert shifted underneath his blankets, trying to find warmth and sleep. He shouldn't have left her bed hours ago. It was so much warmer next to her. But he had, and now he struggled to rest. The sound of the fire crackling and popping provided for a soothing ambiance, however, and slowly, but surely, his breathing slowed and deepened and all the tension of his body relaxed. He was finally drifting when he heard the soft hiss of his name.

He opened his eyes, blinking the flickering light away, and squinted.

"Robert."

He lifted his head and looked toward the dividing door to his wife's room, and in the crack, he saw his young wife leaning in and whispering his name.

He moaned, confused, and closed his eyes again. Perhaps he was dreaming. She couldn't be awake.

"Robert!"

He reluctantly lifted his head and saw her face, bright and glowing in his door. "Cora? It's so late…"

She smiled excitedly. "It's snowing!"

He looked at her for a long minute before dropping his head back onto the pillow and closing his eyes.

"Ro-bert!" She called a little louder.

He merely hummed a response.

"Robert, I want to go outside."

He furrowed his brows and lifted his head, yet again, to see her. "Outside? Cora, it's freezing."

With a haughty lift of her brow, she retorted, "Well, obviously. It is snowing."

He groaned again. "Can't you wait until tomorrow? It's the middle of the night."

"No, I cannot." She stood straighter in the doorway. "It's my first English snowfall, and I won't miss it."

Robert rolled his eyes and buried his head again, pulling the covers even further around his neck. "Well, I've had plenty."

He heard her huff, "Fine." And then she closed the door. Robert, in turn, closed his eyes and just as he was about to drift back to sleep…

"Robert?"

He snapped up and growled, "What now?" The moment his eyes fell on her, however, he regretted his hard response. She looked shocked and disappointed.

"I was just wondering where I might find a lantern." Her voice was low and she began to pull his door closed again when he stopped her.

Robert stared at her. Her hair was all tied to the side in a cascade of curls, a pink ribbon touched her shoulder. He smiled. They hadn't been married long, almost nine months or so, and he still found ways in which she surprised and endeared herself to him. And now, her genuine thrill of winter's first snowfall was one of them. He swung his legs out of the bed and grabbed for his heavy coat out of the wardrobe.

"Alright, Cora," he said and she responded with a grateful grin, "But do bundle. And let's not stay out long, hmm?"

Once outside Robert realized what a waste of energy finding a lantern had been. The moonlight was so bright against the snow that they could see all around them with ease.

The thick silence of the snow falling was overwhelmingly peaceful as they crunched their way through the grounds.

Robert stole glances at his wife. The frigid cold nipped at her nose and cheeks, making them pink, and her lips were a deep red. She looked around in awe at the beauty that surrounded them. He watched as she brought her eyes up to the sky and then out across the grounds and then back around to the abbey.

"I've only ever seen snow in the city," she whispered into the quiet. She gazed at the scenery. "This…this is beautiful."

Her appreciation made Robert's chest burn warm and he stepped nearer to her, peering out across the yards himself, and then back at her face - her lovely, lovely face.

She blinked slowly, her mouth agape, and studied the abbey, the little frostings of snow covering the peeks and crests and glistening in the moonlight.

After a long appreciative silence, she spoke again. "I can't believe I live here," her words were soft, "it's like a fairy tale."

He felt his breath hitch and his heart jump at her statement. He let his eyes find hers and he smiled. "So then am I Prince Charming?"

She grinned and he noticed a snowflake that had landed on her lashes. The sight of it made him inexplicably want to kiss her. She nodded slowly, "If you want to be."

After a moment of silently debating, Robert stepped once toward her with a crunch of the snow beneath his feet. Lifting his hand, he caressed his gloved fingers across her lips and then slowly replaced his fingers with his lips.

When he pulled away, her eyes remained closed. She sighed. "Please don't do that."

Her response took him aback. "What?"

She opened her eyes and searched his. Her expression was pained. "Robert, I…you know how I feel for you and it…" She averted her gaze now and looked down at the snow. "Don't make it seem like you love me when you don't. Please."

His chest constricted. He couldn't breathe. A lump was in his throat and he tried to swallow it down, but couldn't. "But…" He touched her hand. "But I…"

Her body held completely still, her eyes came up again to his, widened, and her lips parted the tiniest bit.

Robert swallowed and closed the gap between them again with another kiss. He whispered against her lips, "But I do."


	20. Tenuous

Tenuous*

She wasn't sure how well she slept, or if she'd slept at all. But, upon waking, she pushed herself from the mattress and peered about her dim room. Warm dusky light filtered in, touching various objects of her possession, kissing the mirror of the vanity and flinging itself to the far edges of the walls. She stared at it for a moment, and wondered quietly - as if in passing - what time it was. She thought to perhaps check the clock, but her body decided against it, staying still as she moved her eyes to the window.

More time passed, though how much she wasn't sure, before she heard the door creak open softly, followed by a tender knock.

"My lady?"

Anna.

Edith turned to her, and watched her as she tilted her head slightly toward a tray of soup and toast she held above her swollen belly.

"I've brought you something. Should you feel hungry."

But Edith didn't feel hungry. She wasn't sure she felt anything anymore, her chest too exhausted from the emotions that had plagued her in the too-early hours of the morning.

"Where's Madge?" she managed to croak, and she watched as Anna took in a breath, smiling sadly.

"Downstairs. I told her I'd take it up." She paused. "I wanted to see how you were."

Slowly, her gaze moved from the maid to the window again, and she stared.

When she didn't answer, when the room stayed quiet for longer than a moment, Anna set the tray upon a small table, and Edith could see in her periphery as the small woman straightened up again, her smaller hands folding over her round middle.

And Edith suddenly felt sad.

"I'll just leave it here for you, my lady. If you need anything else -"

But there was something else. She looked at Anna.

"Where's Mary?"

Her own question seemed strange coming from her lips, but Anna didn't show any surprise. She only pulled her lips tightly before answering.

"With His Lordship," she answered quietly. "In his dressing room."

The walk there seemed to take so much longer than usual, and Edith hated the way it made her begin to question what she was doing.

Mary had always been the great comforter to their parents. After the miscarriage, after Sybil, and even after Matthew in a strange way, Mary had been there. She was the one to stroke their hands, to hear their sorrow, to remind them that life does not end with death. Edith had not. She had only ever been their child - their middle child - that seemed to need constant mending and nurturing.

But however much she felt she couldn't do this, however much she felt she couldn't go to him, she knew she must.

They were the only ones left.

She and Mary were all he had left of her.

And so Edith went into her father's dressing room, and found as she always seemed to find, that he wasn't there at all.

She let her eyes drift around the empty space until they came to the dividing door, spying the crack that would lead her to where he was.

Mama's room.

They were in Mama's room, and Edith pulled in a steadying breath before stepping through.

Mary turned the moment she came in, looking at her with a short coolness before turning back to where their father sat, quietly, in the chair near the window.

The last, sacred, golden light poured onto his profile, and Edith could see that his eyes were very red. Of course they were, she reasoned, he'd not slept for days, he'd not slept since it had happened just this morning…though it seemed like time didn't make sense now. It felt so long ago, and yet like it hadn't happened at all. Edith's gaze moved past him slowly and to the bed her mother had been in.

And she saw that it had been made.

Someone had made her bed.

"I can't remember."

Her father's voice called her back to present and she looked at him, and she furrowed her brow.

"Papa?" Mary walked to where he sat, and she knelt beside the chair, the sun casting his shadow down over her features.

"I can't remember," he repeated, his fingers pressing to his forehead, his head leaning in his hand. "I can remember nearly every other moment but the one. It simply won't come."

Edith watched as Mary placed her hand upon his, the one that rested on the chair. "You're tired, Papa. You need rest."

But their father only sat straighter in the seat, and he lifted his chin. "No, I'm not tired."

And Mary fell silent.

Edith's heart began to thump painfully as she looked at him, and from a stirring in her chest, her legs began to move. She felt herself kneel on the other side of him, her sister's eyes looking at her perplexed, their father's eyes now looking where Edith's had been only moments before: Their mother's bed.

"Can we help?"

Edith's voice was quieter than she thought it would be, but graciously Papa had heard it, and he peered down at her.

"Can we help you?" she repeated from where she knelt. "Can we help you remember?"

He remained quiet, but his brows knitted tightly before he drew in air. "How we met," he ushered out with that same breath. "I can't seem to remember how I met her."

Edith saw as Mary fell, slightly and slowly, from her haunches. And Edith saw as Mary swallowed. Even in the shadow of their father's face, Edith saw the pull at Mary's heart, she saw the fragility that Mary tried to keep hidden under layers and layers of confidence - that she especially tried to keep hidden from Edith.

She looked up at her father, then, for a long moment, looking at his eyes, and his eyes were on hers as well, but not really looking at her. In the draping of the setting sun, Edith could see he didn't look at her at all. But nonetheless, she squared her shoulders a little and spoke.

"Wasn't it...at a ball, Papa?"

Edith suggested it, gently, for she wasn't sure of what he'd say, what he'd feel. Of course she knew that it was; she had heard the story many times before. She'd been the one to ask Mama all those years ago, and she'd been the one to ask her to repeat it again and again, Sybil listening closely, Mary, across the room, distracting herself with something she had deemed more important.

"It was at a London ball," she continued, much the way she thought Mama would have done. "One of the first of the Season."

It was very still after she'd spoken, Papa making very little movement, except to avert his eyes from her. He looked up again at the bed.

A foreign panic began to creep into her chest, began to flap behind her ribs. It didn't feel like the tear of Sybil. It didn't feel like the cold of Matthew. It didn't feel like the crumbling of Michael. It was a new grief. A burning grief. A child's quick terror at noticing she was alone, that her parents were not at her side. She felt lost, and she wanted to pull him back to her.

"Lord and Lady..." Edith shook her head slightly, her lip beginning to tremble. She had heard the story so many times, she could hear Mama's voice, young and warm, in the nursery as she told them. But she couldn't remember. She couldn't remember. And Mama had gone, and Papa was leaving, and she was suddenly a child left behind. Her voice sounded so much stronger than she felt, the little quiver nearly imperceptible. "Lord and Lady..."

And then, when the silence of her mind grew much too loud, Mary filled it.

"Simsbury."

Not caring what she thought, Edith brought her eyes to her sister's, and she looked at her. To some small degree, Edith was startled to see that Mary looked back at her.

"Lord and Lady Simsbury," Mary repeated evenly. And Edith watched her struggle for an even breath of air.

"And…" the story came flooding back to her, her mother's voice, the soft weight of her hand as it had stroked Edith's hair. "…it had rained," Edith added, and she realized she was speaking more to her sister than her father, their hands holding onto his coat sleeves. Just like they had done when they were small. Begging him not to go. "So the floor was wet..."

Pictures the story had drawn in her young mind filled the darkness that had been, and she saw the flowers and the candles and the shimmering glasses of champagne. She saw the handsome men, she saw her beautiful mother.

And in watching her sister, Edith realized that she had been listening. All those years ago, she had been listening, for she could see her eyes moving slightly as she looked across their father's lap, moving slightly as if she were seeing a similar scene.

"...but no one minded." Mary's face remained so calm, every muscle, every feature remained at rest in the shadow of Papa. And her voice was soft. "Everyone danced as if it weren't, so as not to spoil the fun."

Edith could see Mama, she could feel the taffeta of her dinner skirt, she could smell the rose in her hair.

"...but then…it was a waltz…the first dance" it was the part at which Edith would peer up at her, and Mama would grin, and widen her pale eyes, lowering her voice in mock dramatics, "…and Mama slipped..."

"...and Papa…" Mary looked down into her own lap, and Edith watched her stiffen with a breath, and her eyes flew up to their father, "you caught her arm."

Edith felt the thread between them break, snap, and she too sank to her heels and blinked her eyes up to her father, the three of them silent, the once golden light now a dying red.

Quiet, such quiet, that Edith found it hard to breathe.

"She wore a blue dress."

Papa's brow gathered, like storm clouds, above his watering eyes. And he began to blink away the emotion, his jaw tightening, his throat moving uncomfortably as he swallowed down what Edith knew to be a lump of sorrow.

"A dark blue. Lace at the sleeves," he repeated, for a moment pressing his lips. "She always looks very nice in blue."

And Edith, her chin shaking as the tears won against her strength, looked across at her sister, and shared one last look before Mary stood and touched her father's arm, becoming the comforter once again.


	21. Uxorious

**Uxorious***

Grief is a funny thing. A strange thing. It's an emotion so very necessary to life, to live again after death, and yet it can be the very hindrance to living again. All too often, it consumes its victim, swallowing him, pulling him down, down, down inside himself. Othertimes, it's quieter. Deadlier. It creeps inside one before he realizes that the woman he loves will be no more. And Grief lingers there, and waits.

Such was true for Robert Crawley.

He had heard them, but had somehow not understood. How could she go before him? How could his life exist without her? Without Cora.

"Read to her; laugh with her. Keep her comfortable."

That's what they had said, those doctors. Harley Street's Dr Craig, Old Dr Clarkson, all those terribly young York doctors - the young doctors she'd organized and encouraged. Young doctors who, four months before, had given her a large bouquet of white roses when she could no longer hide the fact from them that she was ill. All their words still reverberated around Robert's head, their pale looks of finality still fresh in Robert's memory, deepening the worried creases around their eyes.

"Keep her comfortable."

Comfortable. The word was the enemy of itself, the very idea of only being able to be made comfortable somehow the terrifying prelude of what they suggested would happen next.

How could there be comfort at a time like this? How could he keep her comfortable when he felt so very far from feeling anything of the sort? At a time when everything Robert held dear, everything that Robert knew, understood, wanted, remembered, belonged to - everything - was growing fairer, and thinner, and quieter, and weaker. Everything was slipping away. She was slipping away, though she still lied in the bed they'd shared for so many years, the distance between them a finger's reach.

As one does, Robert soldiered on. In spite of the impossibility of ever finding comfort for himself, he strove to find it for her. He strove to keep her happy. To keep everyone's spirits high, to keep their focus on the years that had been and not on the too few moments that remained. Though it hurt him, tore through him, clawed slowly at the beating organ that belonged to her and her alone, Robert did it. And for her.

He called Edith and Bertie. He called Sybbie. He pulled George aside and reminded him to be sure and smile more, to talk of joyful things. He lifted his chin in warning when Mary took her mother's hand, and spoke too softly, blinking away her sorrow.

"Papa," Mary had said later in the hallway outside the door. "Surely I'm allowed some tears."

"No," he had answered. "Not when you're with her."

Robert was always with her.

It went on like this for a week, for two weeks, for days, hours, minutes longer than anyone thought it would - than anyone thought she would - until at last, Robert found that his family's facade was cracking and chipping away. They were no longer keeping up spirits, keeping happy, the comfort Robert strove so hard to create slowly unraveling at the loosely-bound seams.

It had all become a waiting game. His entire life now seemed to have become a waiting game. A long, cruel waiting game, and the lack of sleep settled in his bones, biting at his joints. It settled in his chest, suffocating his lungs. It settled on his lips, and he found he could no longer smile, though he tried.

He sat with her. He watched her rest; he held his breath, evened it, tried to pace it with the breath of his wife - her thin chest rising and then falling in intervals that seemed unnatural, burning Robert's lungs.

He spoke to her. Early mornings, at the first notes of the earliest songbirds, he drew open the curtains himself, and he went through what their family had planned for the day: George and Grace would strive to find a new cradle; Tom and Henry had a meeting in Ripon; Edith would be calling, she'd be meeting Eric back from Eton soon. He'd list it all, and afterward she'd smile up at him, remark on how nice it all seemed, and then they'd fall quiet as they waited for someone to bring up her breakfast. The breakfast he'd feed her every morning. Every morning.

Until, one morning, when he didn't. He couldn't. Because she wouldn't eat.

And grief began to seep beneath the door of her room. It began to seep inside of Robert.

"It does smell particularly good today," he lied as he stirred the broth. "And we'll ring down for some toast when you've finished."

"No," she had whispered. Hoarsely.

"Here then," he continued, ignoring her, feigning as if he hadn't heard her at all. It was easier that way. Much easier. "Have this swallow, and tell me if it could do for some salt. I think it should."

"No."

"We mustn't let it get cold. After all, I think Sybbie's made this batch."

She shook her head slowly at the proffered spoon. She had drawn in a trembling breath, frowning at the sight of it being forced closer toward her. And as Robert watched her pull away from the broth, something in him, then, something in his joints and chest and lips, broke apart. Fell from him.

"Eat, Cora."

She opened her mouth slightly, but not to drink the soup. To speak. To protest, but he didn't give her the opportunity.

"Eat it."

"I- "

"You won't get better, Cora! If you refuse food, how do you ever expect to get better?!"

And then, and then there was quiet. He felt it.

There was a silence between them, loud and deep and heavy, Cora's eyes brimming with tired, unshed tears. Robert's eyes not, but wide and staring at her, his words echoing back around them.

He watched her mouth move again, the sound escaping it barely disturbing the air around them. But he knew all too well the shape of her lips when she said his name.

That's what had done it in the end; that's what moved him toward grief. Robert realized that now. He realized that all the reading and laughing and keeping her comfortable - in some strange way it was not really for her. It was not for her as much as it was for him.

And he realized that she had allowed it. She had allowed his silly talks and late-night hours and folding the pillow just the way she liked. She had allowed the constant company, the fake smiles and long-winded chapters he read aloud. She had allowed it, for she had known.

Robert's mind was always a step behind his heart. His mind that wanted joy around her, dry eyes, smiles, it was the same mind that over fifty years ago had not understood what his heart understood so immediately.

He loved her.

And as he held her hand and as he stroked her cheek, he felt Grief come over him like a cold rain, the morning outside mockingly bright and blue, a cold reminder that he'd live on.


	22. Victorious

**Victorious***

With the first, it was long and tedious, her body learning with every swell of pain, each tightening of her muscles. Its lesson coursed through her for hours, building and rising until at last, she'd done it.

With the second, it was fast. It was over barely before it had begun, her body suddenly an expert, the memory of the first - so recently delivered - helping her quicken the process.

But now, the third. The third was nothing like the two before it. This labor was all at once quick and furious and now slow - coming to a stop, but not releasing her. It stalled, angry, confused, and trapped. She'd been pushing for hours.

Cora leaned into another pain. She struggled to pull in a breath through the cramping and clenching in her abdomen, her chest similarly tightening, her back wrenching, screaming, collapsing in on itself and breaking. She'd stopped paying attention to what others around her said, what they did. Her mother-in-law's soft words were achingly irritating, her maid's shuffling about equally aggravating, so she blocked it from her, blocked everything from her and tried her best to only focus on her task.

_A baby. A son. A boy._

She closed her eyes and breathed as best she could through her nose, her chin trembling with some sort of strange effort. It was some response to pain, it must have been, but it was all foreign to her now, this pain incomparable to any other. This wasn't like the others. Dear God, this was not like the others.

Again, she folded in on herself, her body suddenly desperate to move more quickly and more limberly than just sixteen hours before, sixteen hours ago when she'd struggled to roll out of her bed, Robert laughing lightly as he pulled her by her hand, painless. It felt like another life now, though it had only been this morning. Why was it stretching on? The second had been so fast. Edith had come so quickly. Why was this one stretching on and on. Why, though her body pleaded with her to move as she bore down, did it increase the pain tenfold when she did so?

She felt a flutter of panic at her thoughts, at the realization that something may not be right, and she concentrated on breathing through another one, another peak of crushing pain, pain that crumpled her in half, pain that told her to move again, to shift her position, to bear down.

Her body acted of its own accord, she felt herself follow its lead, but she shook her head, her eyes closed.

"Mama," she couldn't speak and breathe simultaneously; oh, for God's sake, she could barely do either on its own. But somehow she tugged in another breath, and with some effort, forced it out. "Mama!" Violet's soft hand caught her own.

It waned again, slightly, though the pain never went away now. It had become one constant grip on her, the intensity of which flowing in and out like waves beating the coast in a storm. What remained when the tide sank was pressure. Pressure. So much pressure.

Cora moved again, sitting up, lifting herself. Her eyes remained closed, her brows tightly knit, her muscles only moving to the demands the pressure made. Hands and knees. She felt compelled to move to her hands and knees, lying on her back sending sharp shooting pains in the clutch of muscles in her back. But there was a more pressing command.

She felt it. _Push. Push. Push._ And unlike the two labors before, it was not met with some sight of relief. Her mind and her body were at odds. She knew it when the pain fell slacker. She felt the confusion her body scratched and kicked at. And she shook her head again, panic again - panic, and reached out once more for Mama's missing hand.

And without any other warning, another pain built and strangled itself inside of her, and she bore down. Hard.

Her voice broke.

"No..." Why was she saying it? Why was she shaking her head? Her body felt the next pain, and again, she stiffened and pushed.

But nothing. Nothing. Nothing! _Oh, God._ Nothing.

"Something - something isn't..." She opened her eyes and looked around for Violet; finding her nearer than she thought. Words wouldn't come. She could only shake her head. Pain. Another pain.

"Lady Grantham, lie back -"

She felt herself shaking her head still, but her mouth would not move from its bite, her lips pressed between her teeth. She wouldn't lie back. She couldn't. She had to bear down now. She had to push, though on her back seemed impossible. Hands and knees. Sitting up. Anything to help the - oh, God - the pressure.

"- back, Clarkson will check your progress -"

Mama's voice was in her ear, her hand had at sometime moved from Cora's grip to her shoulders. Cora hadn't noticed. She shook her head again.

"Just for a moment, Cora."

Rosamund's voice was here now, but Cora shook her head again. Her lip trembled again. The words felt stuck in her throat, aching; why did it feel like tears? She opened her eyes and looked at the doctor, training her gaze on him as another pain rose within her.

"I, oh God -" she breathed, and then crunched forward. Moving. She had to.

"You mustn't! Please!"

"Don't!"

"Lie back -"

Cora shook her head against it all, but did as she was bid, letting the doctor check her, his fingers no longer hurting when he measured, probed. For the first time in nearly an hour, Cora noticed that the bedding beneath her was wetter. And the heat of the room, though it was late December, was blazing.

And for the first time again in nearly an hour, Cora betrayed herself with her prayer. A boy. A boy. For all this pain, please let it be a boy.

There was quiet when he removed his hand, and Cora opened her eyes. She didn't want quiet. She didn't want quiet.

She was panting. Why was it so difficult to breathe? "What." The quiet meant something. The lack of air in her lungs meant something. "What!"

Dr Clarkson leaned over and he spoke to Mama, Cora watching. And Mama - she looked at Cora as he spoke, her eyes widening nearly imperceptibly.

Cora shook her head. The ache in her throat was back. The flutter in her chest. "Tell me," she said. "Say what's wrong. Say it."

"Cora, we're going to try to maneuver…to, uh, turn the baby…"

"Tur - oh…" She let her head fall back, her head too heavy, her shoulders too tired though the pain demanded she move.

Too tired. Too much pain. Misery. Misery. Misery.

"Lady Grantham, the child is presenting what we call posteriorly. I'll need to carefully urge the baby's chin down, in hopes to also having him shift slightly. That is, if the next few pains don't prove effective. The baby has been engaged for so long, and without any - "

But Cora didn't care. She wanted it done. She wanted it all to be done. She was so tired. She couldn't breathe. She shook her head at his words, nodded, her hair falling out of the ribbon it'd been tied back in.

"-that mean? Posteriorly? And without effective efforts? But you've said she's progressed. "

Rosamund was talking too much. They were all talking too much. Another pain, and Cora struggled to breathe through.

"The face is presenting upward, and it's slowed the labor. It's made the delivery more difficult, Lady Grantham's efforts have not moved the child which could lead to fetal demise. In a normal labor -"

" - it isn't normal?"

"Rosamund, you mustn't…"

" - worst case the umbilical cord could become lodged -"

"Should I fetch Robert?"

"Rosamund, enough. Dr Clarkson, Lady Grantham mustn't feel as if -"

But Cora had heard. She'd heard, and the panic began to flutter again. And again. And again.

"- the child delivered. We'll need to turn Her Ladyship to her side if she fails to push the baby forward. Or I must make an incision -"

"I want to push." Cora felt herself sitting up again, felt her body curling in on itself, felt the surge and swell of pain in her abdomen, her back. "I want to push. I want to push."

"It may be better to attempt to turn the child, first, my lady. You've not -"

But Cora ignored him. She gathered up all her strength, all her energy, and she sat further, she brought her knees to her, she pulled in a breath. And on the next pain, she bore down, and hard.

_A boy. A boy. A boy._ The child was going to be delivered. Her son was going to be delivered. Now. She could do it. She would not be cut. She would not risk the inability to have other children. For if this proved to be a girl, she'd...oh. She couldn't think of that now. A boy. A boy. A boy.

She felt her strength gather in the form of a high-pitched rumble in the bottom of her throat, it coming from her mouth strangled and loud. It burned. Her body burned, fire.

"I'm going to help the child along, Lady Grantham; on the next pain. You'll feel me here, tucking his chin."

"Very good. Very good."

Cora tried again to sit up, everything was trembling now. She felt a stir of nausea mingling among the pain. And everything else...everything else was so heavy. And she couldn't breathe.

"Lady Grantham -"

His hand was there. Thick and horrible. Too much. Too much.

"- Cora, again. You must." Rosamund's weight was beside her, and though she wanted to jerk away from her sister-in-law's touch, she hadn't the strength. Another pain. "Robert's been -"

And then, suddenly, was the thought of him, drowning out Rosamund's words, the thought of him - of Robert, of Robert holding their baby, his son - coursed through her. She folded herself forward, and somehow, she pushed again. Stronger. Longer. Mama said encouraging things beside her. Dr Clarkson was touching her, she could feel it, feel his fingers even in spite of the burning.

She fell back again. It hurt. To lie down hurt. Her back, her back.

She tried desperately for breaths, her chest on fire, her legs unable to hold themselves up any longer.

Pain, pain, pain.

"Lady Grantham, now. Now. You have to try again."

"- fetch him. I must. Mama? Don't you agree."

"Robert will be no help, Rosamund."

But Cora shook her head. She shook her head and that ache in her throat started again, the precursor to tears. The room around her swam in streaking lights of fire and candlelight. Her lashes fell heavy and cold.

She wanted him. She wanted him here in spite of his inability to even hear of such details, in spite of the secret women kept amongst themselves, that men asked them to bury down beneath their skirts. Men mustn't see the work of childbirth, there should never be evidence of the terrible strength lurking beneath the softness of their flesh. But Cora didn't care. She wanted him.

More pain, building and quivering inside her. She tried desperately to sit up, but could not. Her body made a terrible sound, it moving from her chest upward, and Mama's soft fingers met her wrist, hard.

"Cora. Now. Push."

"I'm trying," and she was. She was, for God's sake. She was aware of another pain, but it seemed as if it were at a distance.

"Robert deserves a healthy child. He deserves his child, doesn't he?"

Mama's words cast more tears in Cora's eyes, though she didn't dare cry. She only swallowed and tried desperately to breathe. "I'm trying, Mama -"

"Now. You must now. The baby may be struggling, Cora."

Cora clenched the hinges of her jaw, and at the swell of the next pain, she pushed through the burning, the trembling, the excruciating spears of fire in her back.

It had to be a boy, it had to be a boy, it had to be a boy.

Pressure. Pain. The impossible coarseness of the doctor's hand. Fire.

And then...she fell back, panting, the burning immediately gone, the pain immediately subdued, but her head too heavy too lift.

Three years of trying again to conceive, nine months of sickness, of restlessness, and swollen fingers and feet, twelve hours of surging pains, two hours of bearing down, birth, it all came to one hearty infant's cry, but no cheering from those around her.

A girl. A third girl.

Her throat burned, her eyes, and she fought away the threat of anymore tears. It didn't have to be said aloud. The silence confirmed what she had somehow already known. Oh dear, she closed her eyes.

"Another..." her voice cracked beneath the weight of her heart. c

Oh, but she couldn't be more disappointed in herself than she already was. She couldn't bear to think she was disappointed in this child, she couldn't bear to acknowledge that she was unhappy now - that it had all been for naught - but she knew she was.

The sweet weight of it, of her daughter, was placed on Cora's chest and she opened her eyes. Clarkson stood, his work between her legs nearly finished, her maid smiling down at her as Cora's hands, as if some maternal biological response, went to the infant. Her tiny swaddled body was warm. Beautifully, beautifully warm.

"Robert's on his way up." Her sister-in-law's hands went to the infant now as well, but then, stopped. Her fingers grazed the white blanket gently before being drawn back, and her hands clutched one another's near her tightly corseted waist.

Cora's eyes went to Rosamund, Rosamund who was smiling softly at her, a strange trembling smile, that quivered at the corners of her mouth.

Cora stared at her for a moment, and then shifted her baby in her arms. She felt even more disappointed than before.

"I'm sorry."

She knew why she was saying it. And she thought, she thought Rosamund knew as well, but as Robert walked in and heard her, he didn't. Of course he didn't. Another secret amongst women, another secret women held in their wombs.

"Don't apologize, my dearest one. My darling. She's here now; that's what matters. She's here, she's ours, and you're both well." Cora let him take their child in the cradle of his arms, his face beaming, his mouth whispering tiny words of love down on the dark hair of their child. Rosamund still stood beside them. Robert continued on. "And besides, we can always have another."


	23. Wedding

**Wedding***

_Saturday 12th January 1946_

Robert watched the bride bend down to where Isobel sat near the fire, and he felt himself smile. The girl's short, dark curls moved slightly beneath her veil, beneath Isobel's warm embrace, and they laughed as they spoke. They laughed, and smiled, and Robert watched as George leaned down as well. The three of them looked quite like a picture, George touching his new wife's elbow and Isobel looking upward to them, all the others in the room seeming to fade away and only their happiness remaining.

Robert could not make out quite what they were saying, their voices muffled and far away, the crowd between them distorting the sound like water. But he smiled at the sight, at the distant murmuring. He smiled at looking over George, Isobel, and Grace, happy that the modest ceremony had gone off without a hitch, happy that life was marching on the way it should, in spite of everything they had been through.

And beside him, he heard a soft laugh.

He directed his attention to his right, to Cora, and exhaled at the tender curl of her lips. His eyes followed the slope of her nose, the sweep of her lashes, the soft glow of her cheek, and he suddenly saw her as she was twenty-six years before, looking on happily as their oldest child, a new bride, spoke with a much younger Isobel, Matthew at her side.

It was not Matthew that stood there now, but the blond of George's hair shone as Matthew's had, and his blue eyes brightened as Matthew's did. And although there was an ache settling in Robert's chest at the thought, he let out a long, soft breath.

"I think Matthew would be pleased," he ventured to say, Mary peering over to him from his left and tipping her head in a way that, Robert noted, seemed very much like her mother.

"Yes. I believe he would," she replied as she let her gaze go back to her son. "He'd be very fond of Grace."

"She's a dear girl," Cora added at his right.

And Mary nodded. The group fell silent again, watching the party, watching Rosamund whisper in the corner with Edith and Edith's son, Eric. Watching Eleanor, Mary's youngest, playfully bat Victoria with her bouquet. Watching Henry and Tom laugh over something Bertie said behind his hand.

"What do you suppose Granny would say?"

Mary's voice pulled him from the crowd. Cora, too, peered over to their daughter and listened.

"The next Earl and Countess, wedded without a silk shoe, a single orchid."

Robert furrowed his brow, and looked to the glass in his hand.

But Cora shook her head, and looked back toward George. "Oh. Mama was more practical than you'll allow."

"All the same," Mary sighed. "It certainly doesn't feel the same without her."

It was true. It was an inescapable truth, the first of happy events since she'd passed. The first of happy events since the war, since so much had changed, and suddenly the smiles and laughter and revelry that went along with it seemed strange, but not eerily so. Only like a wrinkle in the cloth of a lovely tapestry. Only a misprint in one's favorite book.

"She's here," Cora's quiet voice hovered around them, and Robert turned slowly to her. She was looking over the scene as well, her lips turned upward in a gentle smile - a smile that seemed far, far away. "In the laughter and the memories, she's here."

There was nothing to say to that, and after a moment, Robert felt as Mary moved away from her mother, Henry and Eleanor, beckoning her toward them. Toward George. Her family.

She left with a small touch to Robert's arm, Cora still looking on the crowd as she moved away.

Robert let silence gather between them for a moment, an easy silence, a warm one, before, like Mary, he began to think of Mama. As George was patted on the shoulder by Tom, as Sybbie pushed through the crowd of guests around him and shoved a champagne flute in his hand, as Marigold tucked a curl behind her ear and smoothed down her bridesmaid's dress, looking sideways to Sybbie as she laughed aloud. Robert wondered what Mama would've thought about it all, would've thought about George's choice in a wife, the young lady that stood beside their heir, smiling joyfully at those around them. Lord knew the bride was nothing like Mama; she was openly generous, warm, and tender - the very antithesis of Mama, in fact. And it made him laugh, for some reason. It made him chuckle.

But as he leaned down to his right, as he leaned and turned his eyes again to his wife, to tell her this, his light-hearted observation was made colder, and he furrowed his brow. For Cora, generous, warm, tender Cora, was blinking heavily, her eyes filling with tears. And Robert's breath caught in his chest.

"Cora?" He asked quickly, and she very briskly forced a smile.

She shook her head.

Robert, however, saw the clench of her jaw, and was not fooled. "What is it?" He asked again, and this time Cora pressed her lips.

"Oh," she glanced up at him and then back at the room. "Nothing."

Robert did the same, but continued to speak to her. "He isn't going away, Cora, if that's what's upsetting you. He's only married. He's still our George."

"No," she shook her head again, "no. Isn't that. It's -"

But she stopped. And Robert turned to her, watching her, wanting her to look up at him, and when she did not, he moved closer to her.

"How lovely it is," she said at last. And at last, her eyes flickered up to his, the blues of hers swimming in unshed tears. "How lovely a memory it makes."

It felt odd, though, when he smiled down at her, when he reached for her hand. Hers was cold, and she held his fingers tightly. So very, very tightly.

He watched her look over their guests. Their children. Their grandchildren.

"...and years from now, you'll think of this," she whispered. "You'll think of this and the lovely life we've had. The lovely life we've made."

Her words were nearly drowned out by the laughter, and now music around them, and Robert leaned slightly closer, tightening his grip on her hand.

"And you?"

She looked up at him, and he saw that suddenly, suddenly, she looked very tired. And for a reason he wasn't quite sure of, it frightened him.

"You'll think of this, too." His lips twitched in an attempt at a grin. "And you'll wonder why we didn't have more wine."

He delighted in her laugh. He delighted in the way her head tipped toward him, just as Mary's had done. And he delighted in the way her fingers gripped his thumb. Her hand very fragile in his own.

"Yes," she allowed at last. "Yes, of course I will."

And Robert brought her hand to his lips, and kissed it, sealing the moment with what he'd remember most of all.


	24. Xenoepist

**Xenoepist***

"A housemaid?" She tried her hardest to bite down at her grin, but it was in vain.

The image of her husband, a boy of twelve and starry-eyed was enough to make her laugh, but his looking upon a housemaid as if she hung the moon was more than she could take. The idea stirred in her chest an affection for him that she'd dare not say aloud, not again. But she saw no harm in teasing him endlessly over such a thing. After all, it was dreadfully endearing.

_He_ was dreadfully endearing.

"Was she very beautiful?" Cora toyed. She lifted her chin off of the pillow and moved her smirk to the corner of her mouth. She watched Robert, in the flickering candlelight beside her, as he rolled his eyes. "...Your first love. Was she simply lovely -"

"- and I suppose you were first lovesick over some American ruffian."

She chuckled a few times more. "I _am_ American. Who else would it have been?"

" - I can imagine him the type to smoke some foul-rolled cigars day-in-and-day-out. Spending his days baseballing. Am I right?"

This brought about a new wave of soft laughter and Cora buried her lips into the feather-down of the pillow.

Robert shook his head over the sound. "If you're going to turn silly, then I'll go back to my dressing room."

"No, no," she tried. But his voice reverberated again in her ears, and a new ripple of laughter tickled her. "Baseballing. Of course you know that isn't a word. _Baseballing_."

"You know what I mean." Robert lifted his brows. "And much of what you say sounds queer as well."

And she supposed it did, so Cora exhaled languidly, smiling but easing her laughter. She closed her eyes beside him and after another moment of collection, moved on.

"My first attraction, then?" She peered up at him.

Robert nodded.

"To begin, no. He did not play baseball."

Robert, easing as well, looked back down to her, and tipped his head approvingly. It made her want to smile. He made her want to smile.

The shadows from her room fell around him, and for one of the first times since their marriage seven months before, he looked different to her. Smaller. Humbler. Instead of the only son of a great earl, molded and shaped for Parliament, brought up amongst respectable servants and great tradition, he looked only like a young man. Twenty-two years old, and sleepy, lying in his wife's bed. His hair was ruffled, the top buttons of his pajamas were still undone from an hour before, and his eyes were tired and yet soft. Yes, in this light, and lying here with her, he could be anyone. And he was hers.

Taking in a small breath, Cora lifted herself upon her elbows. The bedclothes rustled around her, and her nightgown fell from her shoulder. He watched her movement with a nearly imperceptible smile, but a smile she saw nonetheless. "Well," she began. "If you must know -"

"- I must."

Cora laughed once and pressed her lips, "He was an associate of Father's."

"Oh." Robert reclined further back into the pillows and lifted his arm above his head. With a pout of his lip, he seemed clearly intrigued. "An older man, then?"

"Yes," Cora's face began to burn. "A bit."

"And how was it that you knew him?"

She looked to the headboard, the dim light painting it shades darker than she knew it was. Her lips parted. "Well I …"

"That is," the arm that Robert had just lifted above his head came back down again to his stomach, and he rested it there. "How was it that you even corresponded? His being a businessman."

The conversation had slowly become more serious, Robert's mouth now forming a straight line, a line that, to Cora, seemed to show more concern than his words had. And she shrugged, her head tilting toward him.

"I don't know. I saw him at our house. At Father's meetings."

"You were at the meetings?"

"Well not exactly _at_ the meetings, but certainly I saw the men go through to Father's office -"

"And he was whom you loved first? This businessman as old as your father?"

Cora furrowed her brow and she looked at her husband. "I thought he was, yes. And he wasn't as old as my father."

She expected another quick response, but it fell abruptly quiet instead. And in the quiet, she realized what she'd said. And, apparently, Robert had, too.

"Thought?" he repeated after a silence. "So, he was not, then. Not your first love."

_No. _It was shouted in her mind. No. No, of course he was not. That was clear now. It was made clear by the weight inside her chest, the way the words she couldn't bring herself to say ached as they sat upon her tongue, the warmth in her belly swallowing her up as she traced the lines of Robert's jaw.

She held her breath for a beat, and then, she shook her head. And, utterly embarrassed, she lowered herself slowly down into her pillow.

After all of the volleying back and forth, the quiet that followed was quite loud. It was no secret that Robert knew her feelings; he'd known them since the beginning. But now something was different, something in the way Robert's eyes kept peering down at hers, studying hers, made her feel that what had just happened - what had not been said - was different than it was before.

Eventually, Robert broke the silence with a shift beside her, a small movement that brushed his leg against her own.

Cora swallowed down her heart that beat inside her throat.

"Oh," he said.

And there was more quiet. Silence.

But they continued to peer at one another, look at one another, until again, Robert moved.

His voice was lower. Much, much lower, and Cora felt that everything was lower, closer. The candlelight, the space between them...all the space between them.

His chest rose, "Yes."

She let her eyes go to him at his word, and she waited for him to continue. She waited as he pulled in another long draw of air, and then, she waited as he let his head fall toward hers.

And then, he nodded. "Yes."

"Yes?" Cora croaked out.

"You asked if she was very beautiful...my first love."

Her chest felt tighter. The back of his fingers were soft against her cheek.

"She is," she heard him whisper, and she closed her eyes. "She is very, very beautiful."


	25. Yearn

**Yearn**

With the door now closed behind her, she pushed out a breath she hadn't realized she held. There. She said it. Years of keeping mum, telling herself it was better to bite her tongue, had come to this. It had been her last resort, her last defense, and she had used it. All in. And now to await the response.

She padded quickly over to her bed, pulling away her dressing gown as she walked, shrugging it from her shoulders, her arms instantly prickling at the cold of the room. She had the gown in her hands when she heard the dividing door's familiar click, and she turned.

He stared at her and she at him. Silently. Just staring, really. She noted he did not look angry anymore, and a fluttering happened behind her ribs - but she remained quiet all the same.

They both seemed to break their gaze simultaneously, Cora placing her dressing gown at the end of her chaise lounge, and Robert - who'd come in without his housecoat - picking up his feet and with a practiced swing, slid them under the sheets.

Cora climbed in after him and didn't wait to turn out her lamp.

The room was enveloped in black. She hadn't had a fire lit in four days.

The darkness amplified the silence, and Cora listened closely to the sound of his breathing. An involuntary smile tickled the corners of her mouth at his company.

How she had missed him sleeping beside her. How she had missed the way her mattress dipped toward him, ever so slightly. How she had very much missed his warmth when she rolled more to the center of her bed.

Taking a chance, she did just that, and found to some surprise that he didn't move. He lay on his back, wide awake, letting her shoulder touch his.

This physical contact, however small, set her abdomen aflame with a sweet sort of heat. She closed her eyes, somewhat embarrassed. She hadn't wanted him in here because of that. She'd missed him, really missed just his presence and the way she felt safe by his side. He made her feel whole.

But, of course, it'd been a while. Much longer than they'd been used to refraining.

No. He was angry at her, or he had been. And the only reason he'd come back to her tonight was a guilty conscience. He'd done something once, maybe more than once. He'd led a woman on, perhaps he'd flirted with another, and any other night Cora would have felt hurt. But not tonight. Tonight she didn't care.

He was her husband. And he was sleeping in her bed.

Cora pushed out a breath at the next warm pull deep within her center, and she shimmied her hips further into the covers. Further down next to him. Further down next to his own hips. She sighed again.

Robert moved his head at her sigh, moved it so his eyes were on her head, and she could sense his want for her to look up at him. She did.

They stared again, their eyes adjusting in the dark to see the other, and Cora knew that it was useless to try any longer. She could no longer fight the urge to kiss him, to feel his lips on hers and his body pressed against her own. So, against all rationality that told her to allow some time, against all her better judgment to let him come to her, she pushed herself over him, and with her braid lying on his shoulder, pressed her mouth to his. She kissed him softly at first, tentatively, to test his reaction. He kissed her back, and he kissed her hungrily.

There escaped a moan at his eagerness and she brought herself atop of him, straddling him in one slow fluid motion, her lips never leaving his.

She pulled up her dress, her need for him growing and warming her, and kissed him harder. And harder. Her hands were around his face, then trailing to his chest, and then she lifted herself by her knees to feel his hardness beneath her. As her hand grasped him firmly, she melted at the way he lifted his hips and made that throaty noise he always did when he wanted her.

"Oh God," she swore into his parted lips, "Robert." She kissed him again, relishing in the way he returned it. Her thoughts whirled happily around her head. She loved him. He loved her. After all these years the only person who could ever make her feel this way was him. And just as she had told him, in not so many words, Robert could never be replaced. Their union may not have been based solely on love, but now, after everything - after rich splendor and counting pennies, after wars in the South African heat and cold English libraries, after too-young deaths and too-old pregnancies - the thing that held them together was solely love. And God, did she love him. And although he didn't prod her mind for her opinions, although he didn't always consider her thoughts on matters of the estate, he did look at her knowingly at dinner. He did seek her out to tell her matters of importance, and matters that were of no importance at all. He did sometimes raise his brow, meaningfully, when Isobel spoke out against the status quo, his eyes communicating the things they'd snicker about later on in her room.

He hadn't ignored her. Not really. In Robert's way, she was what he called her those weeks ago: his companion.

Cora pulled away and looked down into his face, both of them catching their breath. She studied his eyes and saw in his the same emotions she felt in her heart. She was sorry. She was sorry, and embarrassed, and so longing for him to take her in his arms.

She brought her fingers to his hair, running them through the thinning locks that she had swept back tens of thousands of times before. She stilled her movements and whispered to him, still catching her breath from the desperate way they'd kissed.

"Please," she breathed looking into his eyes, "put your hands on me."

She moaned again when he didn't hesitate to perform: fingers through her hair, a grasp at her waist, a caress of her breast, a bite at her lip. And when they had become skin-to-skin, when Robert hovered over her and pushed her leg up further with his arm, sighing her name sweetly as he entered her, she felt her eyes tear at the sensation.

It was only the next morning that she'd realized what a mess of her bed they'd made. When Baxter came in with Cora's tray, her eyes growing slightly from the disarray of the sheets and the mussiness of Her Ladyship's braid, Cora thought she may blush red. But she didn't, at least not from shame. She smiled at Robert over Baxter's proffered tray as he came into her room, rosy-cheeked and less irritable than he'd been in weeks. And although she noticed the peculiar way in which Baxter shifted her eyes between the contented spouses, especially Robert as he plopped into her chair - something he hadn't done in close to a month - Cora didn't care.

Robert was speaking to her again. He was sitting in her room making small talk as she spread jam on her toast. And he was sleeping in her bed.


	26. Zephyr

**Zephyr***

Endless chatter, trailing after the group. Endless chatter, as they walked out from the woods. The rustle of movement within the trees mimicked the rustle of conversation amongst him, and Robert frowned.

He always thought that having the women stand and watch as they shot birds from the sky rather grotesque, rather too like a cautionary tale: Don't fly too high. Don't spread the tiny, narrow bones of your fingers too far, don't feel the breeze between them. After all, the most delicate birds fall heaviest to the ground.

The cool air nipped at his skin, the cramp in his trigger finger like the scratch of an itch, but it was wrong. To have a woman beside him as he aimed his clumsy weapon upward, the strange jolt of hunger he felt as the bird was hit, it felt unnatural. And strange.

He'd whispered this to Rosamund once, that he should like to stand alone, and she nodded, telling the fair girl whom his mother had procured that "he hated to stand next to strangers." It had worked then, had worked marvelously well, and Robert killed on his own.

But he was married now, Cora was not a stranger, and she would stand beside him.

He pretended not to notice each time she jumped every time a bullet shattered the quiet around them. It would be peaceful if not for that, all of them dressed in colors of the earth, tweed trimmed into shapes that the women's bodies could never be; besides that, it would be peaceful. The soft whisper of the late autumn wind, the hush that fell over everyone, the flutter of feathers, and then - gunshots.

And Cora would jump.

"Does it hurt?" she'd asked quietly. "The way the gun kicks against your shoulder?"

"No," he'd lied. His shoulder would be red and angry that night.

"How are you sure which ones you've hit?" she'd asked as well. "It seems a bit confusing with everyone shooting at once."

He'd turned and looked at her then, her eyes the wrong color for the sport. His loader took the gun, and Robert exhaled a long breath, not sure he knew the answer. Her father had not plucked birds from the air. Her brother had never held a gun. They lived in a gray world of business, a white world of sails. Robert had taken her somewhere green and alive, and she'd stood beside him and watched as birds fell from their flights.

She had tried a small grin to soften the silence, the corner of her pink mouth dipping quietly into her cheek, but Robert saw she didn't understand. He didn't understand why either, really, why he liked this at all. If he liked it. Perhaps it was something bred within him, like title and duty and honor.

But whatever it was, it passed. They crunched through the dead leaves toward the luncheon afterward, toward platters of roasted pheasant adorned with sprigs of rosemary and various other flakes of green. The wine would be red - Burgundy, Bordeaux, Barolo - the candles would be cream, the feathers in the ladies' hats shades of the birds they ate, and Robert's stomach knotted in anticipation of the scent alone.

Cora, though, trudged more slowly, their walk to the clearing chosen for the tables growing longer as they grew closer, the murmur of others' conversations drifting further from them, their chatter distant and distorted in the wind around his ears.

"Cora?" he called. "Would you like my stick?"

He held it out to her, his body twisting like the staff itself, but she'd shaken her head. A loosened curl blew straighter against her cheek.

"If we don't hurry, we may lose the group," he called again, and he watched her look up from her step to his face, her lips parting slightly. "And the dogs have all run ahead."

"Yes," she managed back to him, the sound barely piercing the dull ringing in his ear. "I am trying."

And she was. He saw that she was, her skirts catching at every fallen branch, her fingers clutching at the fabric and lifting it with her knees, her waist and back small and straight, her movement awkward and stiff. He watched his wife from the short distance as one would watch a stranger struggling with a cart. The wheels sticking in the cobbles, the produce tumbling from the pile, the twigs snapping beneath her feet. She looked smaller here in the woods. She looked unhappy here, and tired, and struggling, and Robert's chest tightened uncomfortably as he watched her. And he lifted his chin.

She was trying. With every small jump and every forced smile of the day, she was trying. With every criticism she endured, with every 'Honorable' she misspelled, with every night he kissed her cheek before leaving her alone, she was trying. And Robert crumbled inside himself. He was the hunter. She'd fallen from the sky.

"Here." He pushed to her, he grabbed at her elbow, the point of it fitting easily in his palm. "Let me help you."

She made a noise, a small sound that hummed in his ribs. Burned.

"Please, I -"

"The trail is thicker here," he lied. "It's a terrible path."

They plodded through, to where it all was thinner, cleaner, easier. They stopped. Cora took breaths. She straightened beside him, she pulled at her skirt. He dug for his pocket watch and avoided her gaze.

"Papa seems to prefer the least practical track." They would be late.

But Cora did not move. She stood next to him, her eyes staring at the browning grass, the changing leaves, the drying bark. She stood next to him in the quiet, the too quiet, and Robert found that he held his breath, unwittingly, so as not to disrupt the silence around them.

"I'm sorry."

Robert shook his head. He didn't want to speak; his throat felt dry.

"There's no need -"

"- it's no good, Robert," she tumbled. "I know I've spoiled your day."

"... What?"

His face drew together, his brows knitting above his eyes. "You've not -" but he stopped.

Her lips pressed together for a moment, and she tugged them to the side, her eyes heavy and clouded, her chest holding a breath before slowly releasing it between them.

He let there be quiet.

Silence.

A long moment of just standing before her, the noises of the trees and grass and wind ceasing to whirl about them, only Cora's soft exhale making any sound at all.

Robert swallowed. He parted his lips.

"Cor-"

A rustle - a fluttering - a pair of pheasants flying quickly before them from the brush at their feet, the beat of their panicked wings startling and loud, Cora ducking as the birds flew overhead, Robert throwing his arm about her, their hair disheveled from the quick disturbance of the air, like a gust of wind.

They both looked up, the birds escaping higher and higher, smaller and smaller, and Robert felt Cora's shoulders relax beneath him, his arm still around her. His arm tightening around her.

He peered down at her, slowly, slowly, and watched her mouth tickle into a smile. "You've missed."

He was glad he had.


End file.
